


Love, A Rather Bad Idea

by ClomWrites



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Eventual Smut, F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, Trauma, mentions of assault, rolling pins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27750058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClomWrites/pseuds/ClomWrites
Summary: Jamie likes her life just as it is. It's taken her years to find this stability and quiet boredom. Until a bright young American with her own ghosts wanders into her life and needs a job.Non-Canon but lots of Canon referencesEssentially a longform exploration of the character of JamiePlease see notes at start of every fic.
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma
Comments: 814
Kudos: 661





	1. In Which Jamie Threatens Gertrude

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I'm doing this but I've started a multi chapter fic.  
> Basically, no ghosts, other than the ones that exist in everyone's past and heads  
> An exploration of the traumatic life of Jamie Taylor, and all her friends. 
> 
> Seriously though, Jamie's past is one of the most traumatic histories i've ever heard and in this she's just a little bit less well adjusted to it, because I don't believe you can have a past like that without deep, deep scars and I want to address that a little. I don't do explicit trauma poking and EVERY CHAPTER WILL HAVE CONTENT NOTES THAT WILL BE SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH IF TRAUMA IS MENTIONED. 
> 
> Will end up having smut but none for awhile. 
> 
> Due warning, I once meandered into writing a fic and it was 40 chapters before the smut. I don't think it'll happen here but if you're only here FOR the smut, you may wanna wait for awhile.

It’s raining, and Jamie loves it. Rain is, by far, her favourite weather. For starters, it’s great for the plants. Sure sunlight is important and a bit of judicious wind to help spread polination (not for her plants, thank you, but in general principles), but water, that’s really the key. Secondly, when it’s raining, no one expects you to go out. No one thinks you’ll leave your safe little dry bubble, they just expect you to hunker down at home. And that, is exactly, what Jamie likes. 

A cup of tea, a good book, and if cold enough, a blanket. 

It isn’t great for business, that’s true. There aren’t many people who think – Gosh, I really need a bouquet of flowers, I’m going for a stroll in the soggy wet, so that I can bring home a damp bunch of begonias. Jamie doesn’t mind. She does surprisingly good trade, for a town the size of Bly, and the occasional quiet rainy day won’t affect her bottom line too much. She doesn’t need much, as it goes, and so, she chooses to relish the day. 

She has her feet up on the counter, with the ubiquitous mug of tea in the cup that Owen bought her for her last birthday. It proudly proclaims Jamie as the Worlds Greatest Lover. She won’t drink out of anything else. Her book is, well, mediocre at best, but she can always truck it back to the library tomorrow if it dries out, for now it will do. 

At the gentle ding of her shop door bell, she looks over the top of her book, and takes her feet off the counter. 

Jamie sits up, stands up. This person is new. It’s not like she knows everyone who passes by. Bly is one of those quaint towns people like to make day trips to, and she doesn’t know everyone in town, just most. She is one hundred percent certain that this person is not from Bly and that she’s never been here before because Jamie would remember. 

Drop dead gorgeous blondes with stunning blue eyes did not wander in to ones shop, shaking rain drops from their absurd purple jacket, very often. Never in fact. Jamie tried not to stare. 

“Hello, can I help you?” It’s her best shop voice. She’s built it herself over time. 

“Oh, Hi.” 

The voice is bright, cheery, American. Unmistakably American. How interesting. 

“Hi.” Jamie furrows her brow. 

“Um… I’m,” the blonde shakes her head, and then moves damp hair out of the way. “Sorry, Dani.”   
She moves forwards a step and her toe nudges a bucket of single stem flowers, almost tripping, so she stops. 

“Are you asking me if I’m Dani?” Jamie says, amused and confused in equal measures. “Cos, I don’t recall being named that. I mean, it’s possible my mum got it wrong but, nope, don’t remember ever being called that.” 

The blonde laughs, and Jamie finds herself smiling despite herself. She supposes that if her rainy day retreat has to be intruded on by anyone, then a good looking girl with a warm laugh isn’t the worst visitor to be stuck with. 

“No, sorry, I’m Dani. That’s me. My name.” 

Jamie grins again. “Pleased to meet you then, Dani, are you looking for anything in particular?” 

Dani smiles again, a wide thing that Jamie thinks she likes. 

“Oh. Yes. I’m here about the job.” 

*************************

One of the best things about working next door to your best mate, is that when he blindsides you, it’s quite easy to nick next door and ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s on about. 

She catches Owen in the kitchen, singing Abba loudly while kneading dough on his giant island. 

“Did you fucking tell an American I had a job for her?” 

“Good morning to you too Jamie, lovely to see you this morning. Weather’s a bit soggy eh?” 

“I will put all your copper pots in a fucking bonfire mate.” Jamie stands her ground, hands on her hips. “I will throw your rolling pin into the bloody oven.”

“Oh, not Gertrude, for heaven sakes. Do not threaten Gertrude.” Owen stops kneading and picks up his rolling pin, a marble and wood thing that Jamie has seen him kiss on multiple occasions, and cradles it to his breast. “Come to think of it, leave the copper pots out of it too eh.” 

“Owen…” her voice carries enough warning that he sighs, and puts down the rolling pin. 

“I see you’ve met Dani. Lovely girl.” 

“Met her?” Jamie hisses. “She thinks I have a job opening. You told her I had a job opening.” 

Owen, to his credit, looks chagrined. “Well… yes.”

Jamie stares at him, really just stares at him, with her best withering glare. It’s a fucking good withering glare, and Owen melts pretty quickly. 

“Look, she, she needs a job ok. She’s new and she’s lovely, and we had her here for three days but it’s not going to work, and I thought, well, you really need someone and she’ll be great, and it’s perfect for you, and…” 

Jamie holds up her hand to stop him, pinching the bridge of her nose. Any more monologue from Owen and she’s pretty sure the minor migraine she’s brewing will take out her left eye. 

“Stop. Rewind.” 

“Hmm?” 

“One, she’s been here for how long?” 

“Three days. In Bly at least. I think she’s been in England a bit longer. She’s...” Owen pops his hands behind his back and manages to look like a sheepish school boy when she holds up her hand again. She scowls at him. 

“Right, and she’s been, what, visiting? I’m confused. Help me out here Sharma.” 

“Uh, well, we had the job out for the barista. And she applied, and gosh she’s so nice and lovely, and amazing with customers.” He looks at his feet. “But, you know, I think she’d be better next door. With you.”

Jamie chooses her words carefully. “Putting aside, for one second, the fact that I haven’t actually got a fucking job advertised, let me just clarify: You want me to give a job to someone that you, in point of fact, do not wish to give a job to?” 

Owen looks at her. “No, no, you don’t understand. She’s really fantastic. She’s funny and has really great customer skills.” 

“There’s a ‘but’ the size of Stonehenge in that sentence. Why isn’t she going to work here if she’s so bloody fantastic?” It feels like she’s walking him step by step towards a cliff and they both know it. 

“Well, we only really need someone for the coffee and tea side of things. I’ve got the baking down and Hannah’s ok with front of house, and Abigail does ok waitressing but you know, we pick up a lot of coffee business now and -” 

“Owen Sharma get to the fucking point.” 

“She can’t make a coffee or tea to save her life.” 

She stares at him. 

“I mean seriously Jamie, I thought she was trying to poison us. I didn’t know you could actually make a tea bag, water and milk taste like that.” 

Jamie pinches the bridge of her nose again. 

“Did… did you leave her in your shop?” He looks hopeful. 

“No I did not fucking leave her in my shop,” she grinds out through her teeth. “What kind of a fucking idiot do you take me for. She’s sitting out front.” 

“Jamie,” he looks at her pleadingly. “Come on, please?”

“You have got to be kidding me. I’m not adopting a bloody American!” She throws her hands up, winding them in her hair and tugging until she feels a bit calmer. Somehow, this conversation has taken so many unexpected twists and turns she thinks she may be motion sick whilst standing still. 

“Ok, seriously though. You could use the help. You do all your deliveries before and after work. You want more time out in your greenhouse. She can absolutely keep the store front while you get to do more of what you love. It’s win-win. Plus you can take on some more events, you know they bring in the money. And maybe you won’t have to get up at 5 am every morning.” 

She stares at him, hoping the daggers will pierce his heart in front of her. Just because he’s making a good argument does not mean that she has to agree with him. Or go along with him. 

“Which may make you less grumpy.” 

He looks at her, wilting slightly under her death stare.

“Not that you’re that grumpy.”

She knows that he’ll fold. Just five more seconds and he’ll fold. Or stop talking. Or she’ll kill him. Any of the above really. 

“It was Hannah’s idea.” 

*********************

“You comin’ Dani?” 

She says it in passing as she walks out the door. Marches out, really, still utterly perplexed as to what the fuck was happening right now. She doesn’t stop to check if the American follows her until she’s back in her own shop, leaning against her counter, and taking deep breaths to calm herself before she turns around. 

Dani, previously relatively confident looks uncertain. 

“So, you’re after a job?” 

“Yes. Yeah. I am.” 

Jamie runs another hand through her hair. “Know anything about plants or flowers?” 

Dani shakes her head. “Sorry, no. But I can run a till, and I’m a quick study.” 

“Except at making tea apparently.” 

She shouldn’t like how Dani blushes. 

This has disaster written all over it. Despite Owen’s rather salient points about what it could do for her work. Despite the fact that this came as a Hannah request which was well nigh unheard of and almost impossible to say no to. This still looked like a train wreck approaching at speed. 

“Right. Well then. When can you start?”


	2. In Which Jamie Is a Prat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're going to scratch an itch, don't do it like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this is slow burn, I am however, enjoying writing it so, if anyone out there is enjoying it huzzah. If you feel like dropping a comment, I'm needy and my ego could use assuaging so feel free. 
> 
> Still rated G - for some time yet. 
> 
> CN for some abusive language.

Jamie is not used to sharing her space. Well, more accurately, she’s very used to not having a space of her own, and now that she has one, she guards it jealously. While she’s perfectly capable, sometimes even willing, to socialise, it’s always on her own terms, at her own behest.

It’s not standing in her own shop, looking at a blonde American who is, frankly, a little too pretty, and wondering how to start a conversation.

“Would, would you like me to water the plants?” Dani is looking around at Jamie’s shop with not a little trepidation.

“Probably best if you leave the plants to me for the moment,” Jamie says. She feels an itch under her skin of someone coming near her babies. It’s hard enough to sell them, though she does. Necessary to keep the shop running. The store was far too small to run as a nursery. Jamie would prefer to have built a nursery, it was more to her style. A small frontage store in the main street of town was better suited to a florist though. And she does have a knack for putting together beautiful arrangements.

She’d made a hybrid store then, selling a small number of indoor and hardy plants that she grew herself, and the rest was basic run of the mill floristry.

And it was hers.

“Guess I’d better show you how the till works then, and we’ll start there.”

Dani looks relieved at being shown something. Being spoken to. “I’m good with that. I worked counter back home for awhile.”

Jamie nods. At the very least she’ll be a novelty, for awhile, and that may bring in customers. Jamie doesn’t exactly anticipate this arrangement lasting very long. There’s no good reason why a young, carefree wanderer would want to hang around a boring flower shop with a professional grump. She’ll do this for Hannah, and eventually it’ll all come to a natural end soon.

It doesn’t take long to show Dani how the register works, and where to find the prices. She gives her a quick lesson in how to fold up the bouquets, and then steps away. She has no idea what perfume Dani is wearing, but it’s light, and smells like vanilla and spice, and it makes Jamie even more unaccountably grumpy.

“Uh, I’ll, I’m going out the back.” She points to the door to the office at the back of the shop. “There’s another door through there out the back if you need me. Don’t, and I mean this, _don’t_ give anyone advice. Just, sell the flowers and come get me for anything else.”

Dani frowns at her, and then nods.

Jamie flees.

She chain smokes a few cigarettes outside, on the small garden chair and old tin can she uses for just that purpose. It calms her down enough to take stock of her situation. She has Dani in the shop. In _her_ shop. Which theoretically means that she has time to do what she wants out here, an absolute novelty.

But she probably shouldn’t. She should probably be inside, keeping an eye on her. After all, she’s new, and she could make mistakes.

Jamie looks out across her little yard and sighs. This is her sanctuary. She lives next door, in a flat perched over the pub. Her own store is single story, and came with a small, bare, dirt ground back yard that had been used to store boxes and attract stray neighbourhood cats as in mating rituals.

Slowly, over time, she’s turned it into a space that is truly her own. Half the yard is now a small greenhouse, build by her own hands out of scrap and scrimp and save. The other half is for raised garden beds that she’s carefully tended herself. She has her shop, she has her flat, but this is home.

She turns on her heel and goes back inside to the small office. The way she’s fitting in her own skin today, she doesn’t want that out in her garden. If she’s going to feel like this, it may as well be in the office doing hated paperwork. That lasts for about an hour, and she gets more than she usually gets done, because nothing is happening. Her ears prick up when she hears the door bell go, and she eavesdrops through the half open door to the front of house. Eventually, the curiosity gets the better of her and she stands up to watch.

And watch she does. As Dani competently smiles, charms the heck out of the middle aged man buying a bunch of very cliched red roses, and then wraps them neatly in a bow and sends him on his way. Jamie’s jaw sets just so.

It’s weird, very weird, watching someone else do your job.

“Was that ok?”

She sees Dani staring at her, in the door, catching her eye. There’s uncertainty in the question, but, interestingly, a veneer of steel underneath; a challenge. Jamie gives her a lopsided grin.

“You could always smile a bit more.”

She loves that Dani is now trying not to smile. She had, obviously, been smiling at the customer the whole time, and now here she was, trying not to smile at Jamie being an idiot.

“Lecherous men buying apology roses for their wives get smiles now?”

Jamie pushes off the doorframe where she’s been leaning and comes into the room. “If you scare them all away I’ll go broke, they’re half my customers.”

“Duly noted.”

Jamie checks her watch. It’s only mid-morning.

“Want a brew?”

Dani’s brow furrows. “I… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Jamie raises a quizzical eyebrow.

“Um… what… what exactly is a brew?”

Jamie laughs. “Three days. Three days you worked as the barista in a bakery and you haven’t figured out what a brew is yet?”

Dani glares at her. “Well, you brew coffee and you brew tea… and you brew beer… so no. It may have been one of the key reasons I only lasted three days.” Dani sighs.

“Actually I think I only made it to 3 days because Owen and Hannah are so nice.”

Jamie can’t disagree. Owen and Hannah’s ability to wind themselves into your life and become inextricably entrenched is definitely a feature of her own last few years. Still, Dani has time to escape, it’s only been four days.”

“It’s tea. Proper English tea.”

“Oh. Then no thank you. It’s not sweet enough.”

Jamie looks horrified. “Sweet? It’s not supposed to be sweet! It’s tea!”

Dani shrugs. “It’s sweet where I come from. Well, near where I come from anyway.”

“And where is that.”

“Iowa.”

Jamie scratches her head. “Sorry, wasn’t much for geography at school me. Wasn’t much for school actually.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s basically made of corn.”

“You were a corn farmer?”

Dani laughs. “No, fourth grade teacher. Until I moved here. Apparently the qualifications aren’t necessarily exchangeable.”

“And you decided small town bakery slash flower shop was a good second option?” Jamie sounds dubious.

“I did try being a Nanny in London for a while but… that didn’t turn out.” Dani looks at the counter uncomfortably.

“Regular Mary Poppins eh?”

Dani looks at her, half laughing and half shaking her head. “No umbrella’s here I’m afraid. Remember the drowned rat look from yesterday?”

“One of your better looks I reckon.” 

Dani looks at her, with those bright blue eyes and a slight smile on her face.

Jamie shifts uncomfortably, fighting off the urge to flint. This conversation is veering far too much into the comfortable and skirting dangerously close to flirting. “Anyway, I’m nicking next door for one. You want one?”

“Uh, can I have coffee?”

“You Yanks and your coffee.”

Dani just smiles at her and Jamie decides that yes, she does like it. And she doesn’t like _that_ , so she takes the opportunity to run away. She lingers longer than she should next door, talking to Hannah who asks her about Dani, of course. She supposes that the whole point of hiring Dani, although the wage that she’s paying probably doesn’t count as a true hire, is that she can leave her alone. It itches. 

Owen pops his head out from the kitchen. He has flour on his moustache.

“Hello English Rose.”

She gives him the look. It’s his own special look by now.

“Your cocaine habit is getting out of hand Sharma.”

He grins, wiping it off. “You want some morning tea for next door? Dani loves my danishes.”

“Is that a euphemism? Also you never bring me pastries but now that Dani is here…”

“Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been disappointing you. I’ll cake it up to you.” He slides her a bag of pastries and she takes it, despite herself, rolling her eyes. Hannah slides her cup across the table, full of Earl Grey, and another disposable cup for Dani. Dani who is in her shop. Minding her shop. Her shop, which she is not in. She leaves it for five to ten minutes all the time to get a bite to eat, to nick next door to annoy Owen, hell, to pee. But there isn’t usually a damn American in her shop.

Now the itch is getting bigger because she both simultaneously doesn’t want to be in her shop and also doesn’t want to be away from her it. In the end, she doesn’t have a choice because Dani’s coffee is getting cold and Hannah is looking at her with some interest. Jamie doesn’t feel like someone poking her inner Jamie right now, since Hannah is hard to avoid, so she goes.

There’s a customer there when she gets back, but Dani does seem to have it under control, so she just slips the cup across the table and goes to check on some plants at the back.

She feels superfluous in her own damn shop. The itch grows.

She wanders out the back again, finds small things to do while she fights the urge to go back inside. Most days she spends her time desperately wishing she could be in the greenhouse or outside, rather than tied to a kitchen counter, and now, now she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Lunchtime passes, and eventually Jamie wanders back inside to relieve Dani and send her to eat. She’s just finishing up with another customer, when Jamie overhears the end of the conversation.

“And if you just pop an ice-cube in and that waters it slowly.”

The lady leaves the store, orchid carefully cradled in hand, and Dani turns to look at Jamie.

Jamie, with her face like thunder.

“Pretty sure I said not to give advice.” If she could have wedged more stone into her voice she’d have turned to granite.

“Oh. Sorry. It’s just that one I knew.” Dani bites her lip.

“That’s not the point, Jesus. I told you to come get me if they have questions.” Jamie shoves her hands in her pockets. “Go get some lunch. I’ll watch the counter. I’ll be in the greenhouse out back this afternoon, come _get_ me if people have questions. You don’t know enough to be answering them.”

It’s harsh and it’s hurtful and she see’s the look on Dani’s face. Like she’s a puppy who’s just been kicked. She really doesn’t like that look. Or that she’s put it there.

Fuck.

Dani slides out the door, and the shop suddenly feels like a gaping void of empty. 

She suspects she’ll be hearing about it from Owen and Hannah later, and she knows she’ll deserve it. Deep inside, an ache begins, and sitting in the quiet of her shop, finally alone, doesn’t make it shrink again.

She closes her eyes.

_Useless. You’re fucking useless Jamie. Can’t you clean up. Can’t you shut your brother up. Can’t you do anything right. Slut. Whore. Can’t even boil the fucking kettle. Can’t do anything right._

Deep breaths in, deep breaths out. One. Two. Three. She counts them, until the little tight ball inside her chest loosens slightly. She feels like an absolute heel. She is an absolute heel.

When Dani comes back in, half an hour later, she looks uncertain again. It’s the same look she’d had on her face when she’d started the morning. The one that had finally relaxed sometime through the morning. The one that Jamie has put back on her face. 

Jamie coughs. “Um, I’ll… I’ll be out back, y’know… if you need me.”

“Sure. I’ll call. I promise.”

Jamie flees.

Even an afternoon of potting, watering and tending her children doesn’t help her feel any better. Not that she really thought that it would. She really should go in and apologise to Dani, but the truth is that she’s never been very good at that, and she doesn’t know how to begin. So instead she just digs her hand into soil and concentrates on the feeling on her skin. It takes effort to not go back inside and check, repeatedly in fact, but effort is something Jamie has always been willing to put in.

She sends Dani away just before closing time, mumbling something about her having learned enough for the day. Dani has sold more than a few pre-made bouquets – nothing that needed advice anyway. She’s earning her keep.  
  
That just makes Jamie feel worse.

“Come back early yeah? I’ll show you how to open up? Eight thirty?” 

Dani nods, shouldering that absurd purple coat with it’s absurd purple fluff, and shuffles out the door. She still looks fairly beaten down. Jamie feels the knot in her chest pulse. She closes up with a hot, angry feeling in the back of her throat and chases it away with four cigarettes one after the other. She decides that tonight is a night for drinking, heading next door to the pub. It takes her exactly twenty seconds to realise that the universe really did hate her. She spent a lot more time in the pub than Hannah and Owen, but of course they would be here tonight, and of course they would have Dani with them.

“Why couldn’t they pick another pub,” she mumbles under her breath, aware that it’s an idiotic question. Why wouldn’t they be in the pub literally two doors down from their bakery. Their usual pub. The only pub in walking distance.

Jamie grabs herself a pint and makes her way over to where Owen is waving more frantically than necessary.

“Evening Jamie, we were just asking Dani here about her first day. Checking she didn’t get done in by a Venus Fly Trap.”

  
Jamie’s eyes catch Dani’s, and the knot in her chest pulses. Dani is cradling a glass of white wine, and she can see her looking for the right words to say. Jamie piles herself into a chair next to Dani in the booth, and stretches her arm up.

“You calling Dani an insect mate?” She looks her up and down, then pokes the purple fluff on the shoulders of her coat. “I have seen tropical caterpillars that resemble this a bit but I think you might be being a tad harsh eh.”

“Hey!” “Oy!”

Simultaneous exclamations. Whatever today had been, it hadn’t impaired her ability to wear the mask.

“Anyway, Poppins here? Bloody chatted up half the customers. I’ll have to hire more staff if she keeps attracting them like this.”

The look that Dani gives her is one of slight confusion, and also, Jamie thinks, some gratitude.

“Told you she was good with customers,” says Owen smugly.

Hannah drinks her own glass of red and smiles. “I’m glad you’re settling in dear.”

“Reckon’ I might leave her to run the store and just become a lady of leisure,” Jamie grins. “Thanks to you.”

She raises her glass to Owen and tilts it, before taking a long drink.

“Ha! As if you won’t find a million other things to do with yourself. You’ll be snowed under with other work in no time.”

Jamie keeps grinning. She can’t find a lie in what he says. She’s never been very good at being idle. It’s gotten her in trouble more than once, but right now, she feels like it’s a compliment and lets it slide. She looks at Dani, sitting so quietly next to her.

“Alright Poppins?”

“Poppins?”

“Nanny. Poppins. It’s not a huge stretch.”

Dani shakes her head. “Yeah. Yeah I’m good.” Blue eyes bore into her more than is comfortable, but she doesn’t waver.

“So, Mrs Smith says she loves my buns.” Owen gives a hearty guffaw. “Knew I was in with the octogenarian crowd.”

Jamie leans back, and as she drinks down her ale and lets her friends laughter wash over her, the knot slowly unravels.

If there’s anything that Jamie has learned in her time, it’s that tomorrow is another day. You can always try again, every time. Jamie’s rather good at it, a bit too apt at cleaning up her own messes. A side glance at Dani, laughing at one of Owen’s dreadful puns, pink cheeks and happy eyes, makes her think that perhaps, this is worth the effort.

Maybe.


	3. In Which Jamie Fixes It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter really, just easing into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to drop a comment. I swear to god this fic is going to gather speed and plot soon. Very next chapter. I'm just rolling there in my Ow(e)n time. 
> 
> No CN for this one. 
> 
> Beta'd by me which means i'll find seventeen thousand mistakes at a later time.

Jamie is already stripped down to her tank top by the time Dani arrives, even earlier than the early Jamie had specified. She has to acknowledge the work ethic. Wednesday is delivery day, and Jamie has been moving boxes around in the small cool room she has at the back. It was a huge expense when setting up the business, but she’d got it second hand and roses made up the majority of her sales, so it was worth it.

“Mornin’. You alright getting up this early in the am?”

Dani nods. Her face has a flush to it, her eyes lingering on Jamie’s skin – she would think, if it were anyone else. Not likely here. She also looks wary, and Jamie can’t blame her for that.

“You start early as a teacher, I’m used to it. You’ve… you’ve been here awhile?” She’s taking off her coat and the light blue blouse underneath really compliments her. Jamie wishes she hadn’t noticed.

“Finished up early at the Manor and thought I’d get a head start. Delivery day today.”

Dani’s brow furrowed. It was a confused look that, despite having only spent the better part of a day with Dani, she’s getting to be quite familiar with. “The Manor?”

“Mm,” Jamie moves a box and adjusts her bandana. When she turns, she swears to god that Dani is blushing again. “Bly Manor, up the hill. Massive old house, huge gardens. I do basic garden maintenance for them.”

“Oh… Oh I saw that when we drove in. It looks beautiful.” Dani brushes her hands together. “Can I help?” She points to the boxes Jamie is moving.

“I need to move them outside.” She looks Dani up and down. “Might not be dressed for it eh?”

Dani gives her a look, a firm one that Jamie immediately reads as teacherly one. Remembers it well from school. “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I’m here to work.”

“Duly noted,” she grins at her. “C’mon then.”

They do get to work, and Jamie tries not to take note that this really is easier with two people. She wasn’t about to give Owen the joy of having been proven right. At least, not to his face.

“So you work up there?”

“It’s all closed up now. Pulled out all the hard work plants before I left, just upkeep now. Henry gets someone in to do the lawns and the like, I just make sure it’s not all falling down on the outside. No one lives there.”

“Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work. You do that in the mornings?”

She gives Dani a sideways look. “Don’t mind getting my hands dirty Poppins, I like hard work.”

The wry smile Dani gives her back makes her think that perhaps, her behaviour from the day before, has been forgiven.

Jamie would like to pretend she hadn’t spent more time thinking about it than she ought to have. She expected Dani to leave Bly at some point in the near future, understood that this was a temporary arrangement. She’d never intended to be the deliberate cause of her leaving, hadn’t wanted to _make_ her leave. She hadn’t liked hurting her.

Dani had done nothing to deserve it.

Jamie dusts off her hands and wipes them on her overalls. “Best show you how to open then.”

She does, and Dani is a quick study. The store opens, and customers trickle in and out. Deliveries come and Jamie is busy moving things around, putting things together, signing orders and generally getting shit done. It’s only by mid afternoon that she realises that this has been the easiest Wednesday she’s had in a long time.

Fucking Owen.

She also realises that they’ve been moving around each other like a well oiled machine. Dani has been helping her between customers, following orders quickly and efficiently. She’s damn smart, that’s very obvious. She’s also funny, tooth-achingly sweet and has a laugh that makes the tips of Jamie’s ears turn red.

Fucking Owen indeed.

It quiets down a few hours before closing time. The work that would normally keep her here until well after hours has been done. She bites her lip, and then decides that if she thinks too hard she’ll end up tying herself in knots.

“Dani, wanna come learn about flowers?”

“Sure!”

So she teaches her. She starts with roses, after all, they are the best sellers. She teaches her about flower care and advice. She teaches her a bit about the ‘meanings’ of the various colours, because that’s apparently a thing that people ask about now. Jamie thinks that all flowers have their own meanings, and since there are a million different interpretations on what every flower apparently means, it’s impossible to get it right. Surely that you care enough to get flowers is meaning enough? She doesn’t know, but she gives Dani the basic information anyway. She can see the wheels turning, the knowledge absorption. She can also see it when that smile hits Dani’s eyes in the best way.

Jamie feels like a heel for ever having replaced it with pain.

Whatever this situation is, it is definitely dangerous for her to be even skirting near such thoughts. She could turn this into a right royal disaster, god knows she has form. Distance would help.

“Right, that’s today done I reckon. You wanna head off?”

“I can help you close up.”

“Maybe tomorrow. Come in a bit late and I’ll show you how to close yeah? Bit rough to do both ends of the day at once.”

Dani smiles, and dons the purple coat. She has her hand on the door when she stops, turns.

“You coming for a drink tonight? Owen and Hannah said they’d be there.”

Jamie looks at her hands, feels her breathing come in and out of her chest. She looks up, knowing full well that her face is a mask of normality. “Nah, not tonight thanks. Might have an early one.” She smiles, urging Dani not to read too much into it. It seems to work.

“Nine tomorrow then.”

“Make it ten.”

“I don’t mind doing 9-5”

“Come at ten, I’ll keep you a bit late.” Jamie shoves her hands in her pockets, “go, enjoy your night.”

It’s easy enough to close up, and she’s home far earlier than she should be. She pokes through her fridge, which has half a jar of mustard and a block of cheese that has seen better days. She manages to scrounge up two stale, but not yet mouldy bits of bread and a can of beans. She should shop. She could grocery shop tomorrow, during the day, in normal hours, but she won’t.

Beans on toast has been there for her for her whole life, it won’t hurt it to stretch another night or two. She has enough cigarettes at least, and manages to fish half a bottle of whiskey out of the back of her cupboard. She reckons it’s left over from her last ‘non-birthday’.

Owen had badgered her for her birthday, but she’d been fairly steadfast in refusing to tell him. Birthdays weren’t really something she paid attention to, just another year floating past. Mostly there hasn’t been much to celebrate or anyone to celebrate with, until now. Which is how she’d been blindsided one day, when Owen and Hannah had shown up with food, cake and booze and Owen had declared it her “birthday”.

March second in fact.

He’d just… made up a birthday for her.

It had been an nice night, a lovely night. She hadn’t ever gotten around to telling him her birthday was in April.

Still, she has half a bottle of whiskey to show for it. She pours herself a glass and pops out on the tiny balcony off the back of her flat. It’s just two feet of concrete with a barrier, but if she wedges a chair in the door she can prop her feet up and pretend. She makes an effort not to knock over the small pot of Rosemary she keeps there to ward off midges.

She could be down in her greenhouse, but, she doesn’t feel like it tonight. She doesn’t know what she feels like. Chaos is not new to Jamie. Chaos is, and has been, her bedfellow for her whole life. What she’s relished in the past two years has been the quiet, the calm, the predictability.

Logically she knows that harbouring a fugitive from the loudest country on earth for a few months isn’t going to rock that boat too much, still, she can’t dampen down the little frisson of unease within her. She takes a long drag on a cigarette and a gulp of whisky, closes her eyes and leans her head back.

******************

“ _Damie, mama?”_

“ _Don’t know champ, I think she’s out again,” she adjusts Mikey’s bib and spoons some more beans into his mouth. He’ll eat these for her, but for everyone else he throws them. She’s a bit proud of that._

“ _Beans!”_

_  
“Yep, like you! My butter bean.”_

_He giggles at that and dribbles a bit of sauce onto her chin. She cleans him up, pops him in the sink being careful not to make the temperature too warm and washes him down while he plays with a spoon. She manages to rustle up a clean, if stained jumpsuit, and wrestle him into a nappy. She watches him as he drifts off to sleep to her terrible singing, her fingers stroking his downy soft hair._

_He’s so small, and tiny, so vulnerable. She can leave now, do some homework. No ones going to check it tomorrow, no one will care if it’s done or not, but she probably should do it. Instead she stands and watches his even little breaths and baby sleep smiles._

_He’ll still be here tomorrow. He’ll still need her to get him dressed, shuffle him next door to Mrs O’Brien, kiss him on the nose._

_Damie. He’s still learning words, and mostly it’s just Damie and Mama. Doesn’t care to say Denny or Papa yet._

_She smiles._

_It’s nice to be needed._

_********************_

Opening her eyes she stares up at the cloudy sky, her cigarette long since down to ash. It’s getting cold, winter’s bite in the air, the scent of the future. Her brain turns to winter flowers and greenhouse warmth, holiday plants and those hideous wreaths that she’s forced to stock every year.

Well, at least Dani might be around to bring the Christmas Cheer to the customers, god knows Jamie doesn’t really keep that in stock.

It doesn’t occur to her that hoping Dani will still be here at Christmas is truly dangerous thinking.


	4. In Which Jamie has Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani is not herself. Jamie is torn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like adding a bunch of disclaimers to this, but you know, I'm not going to. 
> 
> CN for Kids Hurling Abuse at Each Other. Skip the italics if that's likely to be a problem. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting. I seriously live for the comments and kudos, because i'm a sad insecure individual. 
> 
> Edited by myself so once again, probably flawed.

Chapter 4

“ _What’s your name?”_

“ _Charlene.”_

“ _That’s a pretty name,” Jamie wipes her nose on the back of her hand._

“ _What’s your name?”_

“ _Jamie.”_

“ _That’s a boys name.”_

“ _No it isn’t!”_

“ _Yes it is. It’s short for James. That’s a boys name.”_

_Jamie stares at her. Hotness scratches at the back of her eyeballs, and hands curl up into fists. She can see Mrs Duncan sweeping the front step across the road. Best not start a fight with the new girl._

“ _I’m not a boy.”_

“ _You have dirt on your face.”_

_The girl, new in the neighbourhood, just another kid in another row of houses, is wearing a pretty dress. Black leather patent shoes, green dress, pretty reddish blonde hair done up in braids. Someone taking care of her._

_Jamie takes a deep breath. Not too many girls on this block. Enough kids, but not too many girls. Especially ones this pretty. Maybe if she shoves her temper back down into her second hand boots, the ones with cardboard in the bottom to stop the water seeping in, then she can sweet talk this girl into being her friend._

_No chance. Not when the bikes arrive._

“ _Hi.”_

“ _Hi.”_

“ _Hi.”_

_New kid looks at the three girls, arriving on shiny bikes with shinier clothes than Jamie._

“ _New kid? What’s your name?”_

“ _Charlene.”_

_Jamie watches them warily from next door. There’s no hedge here to hide her, no bushes. Just gravel, dirt and a piece of string strung over tiny sticks to create a fence that wasn’t. She shoves her hands in her pockets and pokes a finger through the inside hole, scratching at her thigh._

“ _Gotta learn the ways around here new kid. Don’t talk to the whore for starters.”_

_They laugh and Jamie’s face burns._

“ _Fuck off Denise.”_

_The curse rolls of her tongue, easy as it comes. No one around here watches their manners. Mrs Duncan has gone inside. Probably a good thing, she’s one cigarette from a coronary, or so Jamie’s heard from adults. She has no idea what that means._

“ _Why don’t you go home to your slut mother, whore.”_

_Inventive invectives have never really found their way into this neighbourhood. Jamie scratches harder at her thigh, trying to get through the skin. Burn it away, the rage. She needs the rage somewhere or it’ll explode out of her. It might now._

_The laughter of the girls feels like broken glass in her ears._

“ _Jamie, get in the house, Mikey is crying.” Denny’s_ _hollering angrily_ _from the door. She turns on her heel to walk away._

“ _Fucking slut.”_

_She hears it one more time. Like all the other times, just one more time. No different to the other times. Except this time she reaches down, picks up a piece of the gravel, turns around and whips it through the air. Always had decent aim did Jamie._

_She hears the scream as she passes through the front door, slamming it shut and pushing past Denny in the front hall. He takes the opportunity to kick her ankle._

_Later there will be a knock on the door and her father, home for once, will answer. Her mother will be in the kitchen, for once. There will be loud words. There will be screaming. Jamie will get the thrashing of a lifetime, bruises that will make it hard to sit down for days. When she feels the rage well up inside her, she’ll press down on the bruises and remind herself. When the bruises fade, there’s always her thigh._

_Somewhere in the echoes of the night, she’ll hear the high pitched scream of the stone hitting. Her brain, twisting the memory like a corded rope, it will sound like something punching a wet bag of sand._

_It feels like lead in her stomach._

_*********************_

Jamie wakes up with a start, twisted in the blankets like they’ve been trying to devour her in the night. Her back aches and her head aches, her body cold from the autumn air creeping in through nook and cranny of an old apartment. She pulls the covers straight and huddles under, staring at the round alarm clock on her bedside table. Four thirty am. It’ll be going off in ten minutes. Ten minutes to get up, find some half decent work clothes, throw her hair up and set off.

She doesn’t bother showering until after her jobs at the Manor are done, no point really. Why wash twice?

She doesn’t want to go today. She can hear the light rain on her window, and the idea of getting up and trudging through that to trim ivy and tidy paths in the damn freezing darkness is about as palatable as a meal of sandpaper.

Her brain drifts a bit. Hazy thoughts, until Dani drifts through them.

She could. I mean, she hasn’t yet but she could… It’s been weeks of Dani working with her. Weeks of them slowly building a workable working relationship, and a companionable one. Jamie has spent more time in her greenhouse during the day than ever before. Dani is competent, can definitely handle it.

She’s a damn good shop assistant, and she has a memory like a steel trap. Great with customers, and Jamie’s fucking saviour when it comes to some things. Like the Grossman wedding.

Fuck Jamie hates weddings. It wasn’t so much weddings per se. Even though she has no intention of ever dedicating herself to someone else to that extent, to offer up a chance of ownership and frank servitude for life, Jamie can vaguely understand why two people might. She could see her self getting more excited about something she has an outside chance in being involved in. Co-dependence seems like hell but hey, everyone likes their tea a different way. No, it’s trying to negotiate the tricky, but financially lucrative world of wedding flowers with exuberant brides, demanding mother in laws and people with horrendous taste that gives her a migraine every time.

She doesn’t have the flair for making people believe that their most important day is also very important to Jamie. At best, she manages to hide the fact that she thinks their colour choices look like a toddler has vomited crayons everywhere.

It had come as an utter delight that Dani had a knack for it. She had proven so with the Grossman’s yesterday, patiently walking through their ideas, jotting down notes, all while explaining that she’d consult with the botanical expert – Jesus no one had ever called Jamie that before – and come up with a truly lovely theme for them.

Yeah. Dani can stay.

Jamie likes her. She fucking likes her. A lot. It was very hard not to like Dani, because Dani is extremely likable.

Sure, when she’d first walked into the shop, right before Jamie had realised that Owen had made plans and not let her in on them, she’d felt a little different. She’d taken one look at Dani and had a brief thought about what she might look like, minus clothing, flushed and panting in Jamie’s bed.

Things were a bit different now.

For starters, Jamie doesn’t do people she knew. Secondly, she absolutely, positively is not about to sleep with her shop assistant, even if said shop assistant was remotely willing. Thirdly, there’s something lurking behind those blue, blue eyes that Jamie knows better than to touch. Dani has depths, and Jamie knows too well what pain looks like. It isn’t there often, just a flash. She doubts anyone else really would have noticed.

Jamie does.

Her alarm goes off pinging it’s incessant rhythm like a truck backing up. She hits it, admittedly harder than necessary.

Her head hurts and her back hurts. It’s fucking freezing.

She can. So she will.

Rolling over, she pulls the covers up her shoulders and goes back to sleep.

***********************

“Mornin’,” she greets Dani when she trudges through the door at 845 am. Jamie has already set the shop to rights, fired up the till and has a coffee, that one thanks to Owen, waiting on the counter for her. The extra three hours sleep had done her the world of good, headache mostly gone on the back of two paracetamol.

Dani, however, looks like she had a night of little sleep. Whatever light makeup she’s used, it’s not covering the bags under her eyes at all.

Jamie nudges the coffee closer. “Looks like you could use this.”

“Thank-you,” it comes out as a half groan, as Dani cups it in both hands and inhales the steam, before taking a sip.

Jamie gives her a lopsided smile-laugh, sipping her own tea. “They say that the first hit of caffeine is like the first hit of heroin, it’s all just addiction.”

Dani eyes her, and then looks at her cup. “You know tea has caffeine right.”

Jamie takes a long sip. “Yep, addicts one and all.”

They sit in fairly comfortable silence. At first it had felt weird, strange to be around someone and not talk. Not that Jamie had wanted to talk, quite happy to be quiet, but she’d felt a pressure to. It had evolved into something much more symbiotic. Talking when something needed to be said, even if that something was just an amusing anecdote.

Evenings at the pub with Owen and Hannah, lunches eaten across the counter, long question and answer sessions on botany. They all added up to, Jamie supposes, a nascent friendship. One that has her teetering on the edge of asking Dani why it looks like she was up all night crying.

Dani, and as a consequence Jamie, are saved by an early customer. Birthday flowers. Jamie leaves Dani to it.

Jamie’s instinct is to shut up, leave it, not poke her nose in where it isn’t invited. She hates having people intrude on her business. This time though, this time she has an itch in the back of her skull that won’t budge, and she can’t help eyeing Dani off as she moves around the store. By mid-morning she’s come to a decision.

“Hey Dani, you want another coffee?”

Dani looks up from wiping the counter for approximately the eighteenth time this morning, her auto-pilot on fully active mode.

“Oh. Yeah. That would be great.” Her smile is tired, and it makes Jamie ache.

She darts next door, smiling at a few familiar faces on the way and skittering up to the counter.

Hannah smiles at her, and doesn’t bother to take an order, taking Jamie’s mug from her and dunking a tea bag in before adding hot water from the machine.

“You know, it would be more hygienic if you cleaned that thing.”

“It concentrates the flavour,” Jamie parries back to Owen, who has just emerged from the kitchen with a tray of chocolate chip cookies. “Can I get a few of those to go?”

“Buttering up our American are we?”

Jamie shrugs. “She seems tired, thought it might help. Actually, wanted to see if you two wanted to grab dinner tonight. Maybe we could take her out?”

Owen and Hannah are immeasurably better at helping people, Jamie reckons. Makes sense to her to recruit the best to solve a problem. Dani needs help. Owen and Hannah are the best helpers. Ergo, Jamie will get them to help.

Owen winces. “Sorry, no can do. Promised Mum I’d make her some nosh and watch University Challenge.”

“Sounds riveting.”

“She gets a surprising number of questions right. Even if she does think I’m my uncle George this week.”

Jamie reaches out and squeezes his arm gently. Any other time she might cajole him, but not this time.

“I’m afraid I have book club dear. I’ve been looking forward to it, but I could do a late one?” Hannah frowns at her, clearly divided.

“Nope. All good. I’ve got this. No reason we can’t go to dinner without you two, hardly need chaperones.” Jamie feels something coalesce inside. Just her then. Ok. A new plan forms in her brain.

Hannah gives her a warning look and Jamie just rolls her eyes back. It may not seem like much, but as acquiescence to warnings go, it’s adequate.

“I can phone in if any debates need a moderator,” Owen smiles, slipping four cookies into a paper bag for them. “I’m delightfully impartial.”

“You’d hand it to Dani every time.”

“Yes, as I say, I’m delightfully impartial.”

More customers emerge, and as much as she’d like to stay, they’re busy. She gives them her best cheeky grin and slips five pounds in the tip jar before scarpering with her cookies and drinks. They won’t let her pay for it any other way, so she just dumps and runs.She makes her way back to the shop and finds Dani staring at a ficus. She waits a moment or two, but Dani doesn’t move.

“Is it talking to you telepathically?”

Dani startles out of her trance. “Oh. No. I don’t think so. Do they normally?”

“Not the fiddle fern, no. For a good conversationalist you want the Boston fern.” She hands Dani her disposable cup of coffee and the bag of cookies.

“Present from Owen.”

She watches as Dani takes a bit of one, without her usual exclamations of delight, and takes a sip of her coffee. If nothing else had tipped her off, Jamie would have known right then something was off. Dani and baked goods were like Shakespeare and soliloquys.

“You want to talk about it?”

Dani furrows her brow. “The fern?”

“No, whatever it is that’s been eating at you this morning.”

She waits, through Dani’s sigh, and another sip of coffee, before a wry grin. “Just didn’t get a lot of sleep is all.”

Jamie debates internally. She doesn’t like being lied to, but god help her she’s done it enough herself to want to give Dani a pass. For once she doesn’t want the pass herself – she’s worried.

“You sure? You can have the rest of the day off if you need.”

Dani shakes her head. “Definitely no. I like working, keeps me busy.”

“I was going to head up to the manor this evening, too cold to go this morning and I thought as you were here holding the fort maybe I could do it then.”

“Absolutely. Promise not to give any random advice.”

Jamie grins. “You know what you know, I trust you.” She drains the last of her tea, popping her mug back down on the counter. “Anyway, I can make it a quick one today, do a bit more tomorrow. So if you’re up for it, want to come with me?”

Dani looks confused. “Who will look after the shop?”

“We can close up half an hour early, head on up. I can show you around. Lovely gardens, if nothing else. Maybe grab a bite to eat after?” Jamie desperately tries to ward off the voice in her head that says it sounds suspiciously like she’s asking Dani out on a date.

“Oh. Um. Yeah, that sounds nice.”

“Might have to nick up for an hour or so over lunch, but I’ll come back.”

“Why don’t you go now, it’s quiet and not raining. Might rain again later.”

“That’s the national slogan of England – ‘Might Rain Again Later’,” Jamie shucks on her jacket regardless because Dani has a point. “But right-oh. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Got it covered.” Dani salutes her with the coffee and then drains the last of it. Jamie makes a mental note to offer more when she gets back.

Jamie spots it when she’s walking around the block to grab her car. It’s parked in the back lane, but the gate from the yard is stuck and she hasn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. It’s sitting there in the window and it makes Jamie smile, so she buys it.

She rushes through her work at the Manor. She doesn’t want to be up on ladders trimming in the waning twilight, so she gets the outside tasks done quickly. Some she leaves for tomorrow. The urgency feels strange, compulsive. She doesn’t want to leave Dani for too long. Not because Dani can’t do her job – no, because Dani doesn’t look like she wants to be alone right now, and Jamie has an unshakable need to make sure she’s OK.

She’d do the same for Owen, the same for Hannah, she tells herself. That this feels different is irrelevant. Dani works in her shop. Dani spends her days with her, logically it’s different. So she doesn’t argue with herself, gives in to it, and is back in her battered Land Rover before too long.

Friends, she reckons, are like rare flowers. Too easy to muck up the cultivation and end up with nothing. Huge amount of effort to get it just right. The effort involved has always seemed mountainous but sometimes, people flowed into your life that fit like puzzle pieces. 

And then sometimes, that effort, was worth it. 


	5. In Which Dani Opens Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie makes a safe space and Dani breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM still going with this. I kind of like taking it a bit slow but I had to finish the other one before my brain exploded. 
> 
> CN: For death and trauma.

Jamie makes them close the shop half an hour early. It’s getting dark, and she’s claiming proprietors rights. Besides, anyone rushing in to buy flowers at four thirty on a dark Thursday afternoon has severely fucked up and also overestimated the healing powers of a bunch of flowers.

God knows what’s wrong with the people who buy succulents under such conditions.

“Wrap up, it’s cold.”

“I thought we were going to dinner?” Dani looks understandably confused, since that was indeed the previously discussed plans, but also, it’s only four thirty.

“We are, thought I’d take you on a little detour first if that’s ok?”

Intrigued, Dani smiles. Jamie likes it, tries to ignore the fact that she’s spending more of her time trying to induce those smiles lately. She also likes having Dani in her car, sitting comfortably tapping her foot along to whatever the radio, glitchy as it is, has tried to produce. Jamie drives them the ten minutes up the road, and stops at the big cast iron gates guarding Bly Manor. She takes a sideways glance and grins at the look of slight awe on Dani’s face.

“Don’t have many of these in America huh.”

“Not this old. I mean, there’s Graceland but that’s… different.”

“You’re not comparing a giant pile of modern kitsch to a proper English Manor House now are you Poppins? This ones been around since the Stuarts.”

“Never.” Dani pauses for a moment. “You know I don’t know who the Stuarts are right?”

Jamie laughs.

It takes a moment to undo the thick padlock and chain holding the gates and then drive them through.

“Want me to get out and lock it again?”

“On the way out. Don’t think we need to worry about anyone wandering around here for the next little while. Except maybe the ghosts.”

Dani gives her a look and Jamie just smiles.

There’s a moment of silence as they drive up the longish road towards the house, and Jamie thinks that Dani is just looking at the scenery until she hears, almost on the edge of hearing, “really ghosts?”

Jamie laughs. “They say so. A fair few people have died on the property, but I’ve never seen one.” She feels the chill run through her bones, at her own words no less, and taps the Land Rover’s steering wheel before pulling up in front of the greenhouse. She hops out, rounds the car and opens Dani’s door with a flourish.

“Come on.”

She brings Dani inside. It’s not heated in here, not anymore, but it’s protected from the wind and outside chill, and the glass has trapped any sun that’s shone during the day. The water and soil scent hovers in the end, thick and natal. Jamie thinks it smells like home.

“Did you grow all of these?”

There’s actually scant growth in here, if Jamie compares it to two years ago. She’s still got vegetables in one corner, because vitamins are important and she can’t see the point of buying a crappy version at the local Asda. She keeps the ferns going out of love, and most of the others are just upkeep seedlings of various plants from around the grounds, in case she needs to replace or restart all the gardens.

“I did.”

“Wow.” She watches Dani reach out a finger and gently touch the end of a fern. “I can’t believe how much talent you have.”

Jamie snorts. Talent? Made from muck she was. Told Dani as much.

“No, really. You come in here and you take all these things and nurture this beautiful life out of it. That’s really something.”

Jamie feels the warmth settle in her chest, has to take a few breaths to not become undone.

“Not that different from what you used to do.”

“Kid wrangling?”

“Teaching,” Jamie gives Dani a face. “Don’t get me wrong, not much for the little gremlins me, but that’s nurture. Taking someone elses spawn and helping turn them into functional humans. Some kind of witchcraft.”

Dani smiles. “Plants do seem to give less trouble.”

“Depends on the plant. They can get right stroppy at times, refuse to do what they’re told, but there’s less fuss from the general public when you,” Jamie draws her thumb across her neck. “And you can start again. I’m told that doesn’t work so well with kids.”

Dani’s laugh is so soft, and so genuine. Whatever mood has hung over her today seems to be, for the moment, at bay.

Jamie hands her a watering can and sends her over to the tomatoes with instructions. They move around each other here as easily as they do in the shop. When Jamie is happy that nothing will die in the next day or two from lack of attention, she gets Dani to rug up again, and leads her away from the greenhouse. It’s dark now, but Jamie knows her way by instinct. For safety, she pulls out her heavy flashlight and hands it to Dani.

A gentle mist hangs in the air, not rain so much as just making everything feel ever so slightly damp. She can hear a few birds, maybe a fox in the distance, and every so often, Dani swearing as she almost trips.

“You OK?”

“Are you bringing me out here to kill me? Or have me kill myself?”

Jamie rolls her eyes. “Yes. Exactly that.”

Dani runs into the back of her when she stops, which is a bit ridiculous because she’s the one with the torch after all. Dani steps around her confused, till Jamie takes her by the hand and brings her forward a few steps, aiming the flashlight up at the trellis in front of her.

“Bit secret, this spot. Hard to find, but it’s here.”

Dani runs the spotlight across it, and Jamie smiles when she hears the slight inhale as the light brings up a single white flower.

“Wow, what is that?”

“That, is a moonflower.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Bloody hard to grow in England. It’s tropical.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you could grow anything.”

Jamie picks up the old lantern she keeps and pops it down near a log. “Not anything. But most things. Given a chance.”

Dani keeps looking over it, and eventually gently touches one finger to the dewy white petal of the flower.

“You can pick it if you like. It’ll be dead tomorrow anyway.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Each bud blooms once, only at night. Once they all bloom, the plant dies. I reckon it’s got another two weeks at best.”

Dani sighs. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Not afraid of hard work Poppins.” It’s become a bit of a refrain between them. Dani comes over and sits down next to her, hands tucked up into her jacket. “Do you want to talk about it?”

It’s soft, and she’s grateful that Dani doesn’t dissemble. She just huddles into herself, like the cold night air is shrouding her.

“I don’t know.”

Honest. Jamie can appreciate that. She lets them sit in silence, because she understands that sometimes that’s all someone needs.

“I think the wedding plan visit from the other day, brought up some things.” Dani looks at her, eyes glistening in the low light. “I was engaged. Back home. I was engaged and … and he died.”

“Dani…” She wants to reach out, touch her, ground her somehow, but Dani is still huddled in to herself and Jamie knows that feeling, that shield to the world.

“It was my fault, that he died. We had… I had… we’d broken up, I guess. I’d broken up. And then he died. Three weeks before the wedding.” Dani runs a sleeve under her nose. “So much wedding planning for something I couldn’t even go through with.”

“That’s not on you though.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Dani, you’re not responsible for someone else dying. You don’t have power over life and death.”

She can see that her words are not believed, and she understands that too. She understands that sometimes you own falsehoods that you wrap around your insides like barbed wire, because it feels safer than truth. Sometimes those barbs catch and you can’t get yourself loose. But seeing Dani hurting like this is hurting Jamie more than she thought. She slides over on the log, takes a hand, wraps her fingers around.

“Life, death, growth, birth, all those things. We like to pretend we have power over them, because it makes it seem less scary, but we don’t. We really don’t. All we have control over is…” Jamie looks around, “well is this. What we say to each other, how we treat each other. How we fill in those slivers of seconds between the moments. That’s all we control.”

“I broke up with him and he was so angry he stepped out of the car and was hit by a truck.”

Jamie sucks a breath in through her teeth, a backwards whistle.

“The same day?”

“Almost the same minute.”

“Jesus Dani. I’m so sorry.”

She hasn’t let go of the hand, and now squeezes harder.

“He was my best friend. My whole life my best friend. We grew up together, his family was my family and if I’d just… not…”

Jamie squeezes again. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

Dani’s head jerks up, looks her in the eyes like a startled deer.

“If you’d not done it then, he’d have lived. Then. And then four days later, he would have been getting petrol, filling up the car before the wedding you know. Making sure everything was ready. Pity really, that he chose that moment to go to the petrol station because that hold up was really unfortunate and no one deserves to get shot right before their wedding.”

“Jamie…”

“Or when two days before that bus ran a red light…”

“Jamie!”

“Or when he came home four years later to find you so miserable, so lost married to a man you didn’t want to be married to, that you’d faded away.” She squeezes again. “I know what it’s like to give yourself over to something because it seems easier than not. And I know what it’s like to get torn away from the thing you think will be your whole life.”

Dani is silent, but Jamie feels the slight flex in their joined hands, a squeeze of her own.

“I’m so sorry you lost your best friend Dani. That’s really fucking awful.”

It is then that Dani cries. Not hard, not great big heaving sobs, but quiet, streaming tears as Jamie gathers her in, pulls her to a shoulder. She holds her, just sitting there, until she feels the slight trembling stop and then holds her a little more for safety purposes. Eventually Dani pulls away of her own accord.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.” She squeezes one last time. “You still want dinner?”

“Not sure I can eat.” Dani sniffs, and Jamie reckons her stomach must be doing twists.

“I have an idea. Trust me?”

“Yeah. I do.” The way she says it, holding it in her mouth and then delivering it with such conviction, it sears itself to Jamie like a promise. It sounds like it should be profound and answered with something equally reverent and enormous.

Instead Jamie takes her for fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper, eaten sitting in the playground. They sit on top of a picnic table, feet on the attached benches, while Jamie teaches Dani the fine art of eating chips soaked in vinegar.

“I’m not sure it’s better than ketchup.”

“Wash your mouth out Poppins.”

“Just saying the classics are classics for a reason.”

“You want to live in this country you’re going to have to learn our ways heathen.”

Dani laughs. “It is better than I thought it would be. The vinegar.”

“I would accept brown sauce.”

“Is that barbecue sauce?”

Jamie makes an undignified noise. “Americans. Honestly.” She knows that Dani is baiting her now, kind of loves it.

Dinner done, Jamie wraps up the paper and pops it in the convenient nearby bin. “Best get you home before you turn into a pumpkin.”

“Technically your car would turn into a pumpkin. I would merely go back to wearing rags.”

Jamie looks her up and down. “Well, I’d feel bad regardless.”

“Just drop me back at the shop, I can walk home, it’s not far.”

“I don’t even know where you live.” Jamie feels slightly horrified at that.

“I rent a room from someone. It works.”

Jamie doesn’t push. She wants to, suddenly aware of the fact that she could suck up facts about Dani like a thirsty man in a desert. Just acknowledging that pulls her away from the temptation.

She pulls up around the back of the shop and turns off the ignition.

“Wait.” She stops Dani from getting out and reaches into the small centre well, pulling out a small box. “I got you this.”

Dani takes it, brow furrowing as she opens turns the non-specific cardboard box in her hands. Jamie flips on the dash light, giving her some vision as she opens it and pulls out a simple coffee cup.

On one side is the Captain America logo - even Jamie knows that one. The other side says ‘All American Hero.’

“You needed your own mug.”

Dani smiles, teeth white in the tiny light of the car. “Well, Worlds Greatest Lover _was_ taken.”

“Pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

Dani hugs the mug to her chest. “Thank you. This is the sweetest thing.”

Jamie blushes, tugging on her own hair. “Just a cup Poppins.”

“Not just the cup. Today. Tonight. The job. You’re… you’re a good friend Jamie.”

“Not too bad yourself if I’m being honest.” Jamie scratches a nail along a bit of dirt on her jeans.

“Even if Owen and Hannah did strong-arm you into hiring me?”

Jamie gives her a once over glance. “Oh, you knew about that did you?”

Dani nods.

Jamie scratches at the dirt again. “They look out for me.”

“And now me.”

Jamie nods. “Yeah. I guess you’re stuck with us now.”

“I think I’m ok with that.”

Jamie runs out of dirt to scratch. “Hey, I can do the wedding consults from now if you like. No need to put yourself through that.”

Dani looks at her with slightly narrowed eyes. “You hate them.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to traumatise you either.”

Dani runs her thumb over the rim of her mug. “You know, I don’t think they will. I think today was just, hard and that’s ok.”

“It is.” She reaches over, hand on Dani’s knee, tries to ignore how warm it is on her palm, or the slight jump under her hand. “And if you need a break, or to talk, you can tell me.”

Dani nods. “I know. You’re kind of the best boss.”

Jamie pulls her hand away, reckons that she probably shouldn’t have it there if she’s the boss anyway.

Dani reaches for the handle, opens the door a fraction and looks at Jamie. “See you tomorrow morning?”

“You know where I’ll be.”

Her flat feels empty when she gets there, dark and cold. She touches the radiator, and it too is cold. It takes a bit of fiddling and quite a bit of swearing until she hears the clunk of it kicking in. She’ll be cold for a few hours yet but by morning it’ll be livable in here.

She dresses for bed in quiet, not even bothering with lights. The streetlight from outside the pub downstairs filters through her far too thin curtains, and her bones feel tired. Dani’s pain has settled in her, and she doesn’t want to acknowledge what it’s stirred up.

_I know what it’s like to get torn away from the thing you think will be your whole life._

‘ _Daddy who is that woman?’_

‘ _Dad… Dad… why has she got Mikey, DAD WHY HAS SHE GOT MIKEY’_

_Screaming, torn from her chest, echoed from her little brother. Hands, far too big, holding her bicep, biting in and hurting, bruising. Tears, stinging out out her eyes, scratching out her vision as Mikey goes blurry and all she can hear is her own voice screaming his name until it gives out._

_Hands, dragging her to a car. Denny, sullenly crouched on the other side of the backseat, face a permanent scowl. Palm, flat against the window, breath making fog._

_Mikey._

_Dad, standing on the steps, like the stone he breaks. Face like granite._

_Mikey. Gone._

‘ _Denny, what -’_

‘ _Shut up.’_

_No seatbelts, the car turns corners too sharply and she ricochets into the door, jamming her elbow. The pain flares and she’s about to whimper when she realises that focusing on it makes the ice in her chest ebb a little. She bites her thumbnail down, pulling it off with her teeth until blood seeps out and she can press on it, letting the pain seep in deliberately now._

_She doesn’t know where she’s going, where they’re going, in this hot sedan that smells like old farts. She feels the fear, and the screams and the uncertainty well up again, ice in her chest and she bites down again on her thumb._

_Just keep going, she thinks._

_Just. Keep. Going._

Jamie pulls the blankets up to her shoulders and rolls on to her side, staring at the familiar crack in her bedroom wall.

It’s not bad advice, she reckons. When things stop making sense, and your world spins around you. Just keep going.

She tries not to think too hard about how much trouble it's gotten her into in the past. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yell at me! In the comments! On Twitter! Wherever. 
> 
> Knopecommaleslie did and I ended up posting this so, just saying it works.


	6. In Which A Lifeboat Is Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bugs and Lifeboats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading along fellow Bly-natics  
> Your comments feed me. Feeed me. Thank you. 
> 
> CN for Insects, implied/referenced child abuse (definitely not explicit) and swearing. Copious Swearing

Friday feels almost back to routine. Dani is back to her normal self, and the day runs smoothly. Jamie spends some time out in her small garden out the back, and feels positively giddy with joy when Dani brings out tea in both their mugs to drink with her in sunshine. She’s even giddier when she’s realises it’s Owen’s tea and not Dani’s.

She spends all weekend wondering how Dani is, but they spend all week together and she feels like it’s weird to seek her out on their days off. Besides, she wants to knock off a bit of work at the manor so she can spend less time there in the cold mornings. As she keeps reminding Dani: she’s not afraid of hard work. Her overworked walkman runs through a few sets of cheap batteries as she uses every single second of daylight to her advantage. She ends the days sore, but pleased with her efforts, falling into a quick warm shower before tumbling into bed.

The blissful second benefit of being so exhausted is relatively uninterrupted and quick to arrive sleep. Jamie is not above using that she’s exhausted herself to avoid thinking.=

Monday morning, she arrives cheerful and early at the shop. Her work at Bly done the day before, she comes on the back of a good sleep in and a good breakfast. What surprises her to no end is that Dani isn’t there at her usual eight forty five. She’s been known to arrive as early as eight thirty, beating Jamie to it, almost competitively. Jamie really starts to worry when Dani isn’t even there at nine.

By quarter past she’s worried enough to pop her head in next door and catch Hannah’s eye, despite the morning rush.

  
“You seen Dani this morning?”

Hannah shook her head. “No? I’ll ask Owen.”

Jamie hears her own shop door tinkle, the noise hard wired into her brain, and grimaces. “Back in a sec, bloody work.”

She organises a young gentleman's ‘congratulations on your first day of work honey’ bouquet with ruthless efficiency, and sends him on his way as soon as she can. She’s worried now, really worried, and her thumbnail bears the brunt of it. It’s an old habit, and of all the ones she’s managed to shift in her life, this isn’t one. She tears off a small bit of quick, wincing at the pain and relieved there isn’t any blood.

When her door opens she looks up sharply and for once is supremely disappointed in the presence of Owen in her shop.

“Still not here?” He looks worried too.

“Nope.”

“Where does she live, I’ll run by and check on her. Or I can hold the fort and you can.”

Jamie winces. “I don’t… actually know where she lives.”

“Jamie!”

“I don’t go around asking people details mate, and it’s never come up.”

‘ _Except last night when I should have dropped her home_ ’ she can’t help but think.

“Have you checked her paperwork?”

Jamie looks at him, wonders why she didn’t think of it herself, and darts for the back door. She’s rifling through the filing cabinet for the minimal documentation she’d made Dani fill in, when the door bell goes again.

“Hey, you’re here,” she hears Owen say and feels her own heart-rate slow.

There she is, by the counter, shucking her coat and looking so much more worse for wear than Jamie has ever seen before. Dani looks, for want of a better phrase, completely done in. She looks worse than Thursday, much worse, and Jamie’s heart rate is back up again.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be late.”

“Hey, it’s OK,” Jamie ducks her head, looking in at Dani, “you don’t look so good.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine. Fine. Just didn’t sleep much.” That is clearly the understatement of the century. Jamie isn’t sure she’s slept at all. She has that swaying, almost about to fall sideways, red eyed swallowing hard look to her.

“Dani are you sick?” Owen is peering at her now, concern in his face. “I think you have chicken pox.”

Dani looks at him confusedly. “You can’t get it twice can you? I remember getting it when I was eleven. Never been so itchy in my life. I don’t feel sick.”

“You have spots on your neck.”

Jamie can’t help but adjust her view, check it out, as Dani lifts a hand to rub across the side of her neck and feel. Jamie feels her stomach sink a little.

“Um. Those aren’t… that’s not chicken pox. I think.” She looks up at Owen, then back to Dani.

“What is it?” Dani sounds panicked now, and Jamie grabs her arm.

“Hey, it’s ok. It’s not a big deal, it’s just… can I have a look?” Dani pulls her collar aside and Jamie peers a bit closer. “Um. Yeah. Those are bed bug bites.”

Dani was pale when she came in, but now she looks positively green around the gills, so Jamie pulls over the stool from behind the counter and guides her there with an elbow.

“I shower every day,” she whispers softly, and Jamie makes her sit down as she looks like she’ll fall if she doesn’t.

“Hey, no, they just happen. They get into bedding and you can’t get rid of them. You get them in a clean mansions as much as doss houses, it’s not your fault.”

She looks at Owen, who nods vigorously even though Jamie is fairly certain from his face that he’s never seen a bed bug in his life.

“Where are you staying?” She asks gently.

“Oh. The… the hostel around the corner.”

Jamie feels her own sharp intake of breath at the same time as she hears Owen’s. “Not the one on Bright street?”

Dani nods, a little miserably.

“Oh Lord why?” Jamie should know better, but she’s more than a bit horrified. The hostel has a terrible reputation, cheap and nasty with little to recommend it. There were a few rent-able rooms around town and Jamie had assumed that Dani was in one of those.

“Uh, I could afford it.”

If there had been a single moment in time that Jamie felt more like an asshole, she couldn’t identify it. She’s responsible for paying Dani a living wage, and Dani is living in the least salubrious place in town.

“I’m going to go get Dani a coffee. She looks like she could use one,” Owen nods at Jamie with a stern look that screams ‘fix this’, and melts out of the building before anyone can argue.

“I’ve not heard great things about that place.” She looks at Dani carefully, gauging her reaction. Dani is far too tired to police her reactions and the look in her eyes tells Jamie everything she needs to know. “I can only imagine that you haven’t been sleeping too well.”

Dani nods miserably.

“Alright. Well. We can fix the bed bugs and the sleep,” Jamie gives her an easy grin, even though her insides are twisting around on themselves. “Had enough practice at getting rid of them.”

Dani looks up, fast, her eyes searching Jamie for something.

“Going to need your clothes Poppins.”

That makes Dani give her a small smile. “I’m kind of still wearing them.”

Jamie wiggles her eyebrows. “Well, I’m not going to complain about the idea but it may scandalise the village a little bit, what with the windows and all.”

Owen, bless his heart, chooses that time to return with two mugs, and puts them down on the counter “We’ll need to get all your things from the hostel, best if we wash them all at once. Bed bugs don’t survive heat, so we can take care of that. You can sleep in my flat while we do that.”

Dani looks so washed out, so forlorn, that Jamie is tempted to hug her.

“I feel like I have the plague.”

“Naah, just bed bugs. Trust me on this.”

“I can go get your stuff,” Owen offers gently. “We’re not busy and Hannah can hold down the fort.”

“Oh. I mean, it’s a bit scattered around,” Dani goes bright red. The idea of Owen going through Dani’s smalls while trying to pack makes Jamie try very hard not to laugh.

“Why doesn’t Owen go with you, and you can grab all your stuff. We’ll probably need to clean out your suitcase and bags anyway.”

“I feel itchy just thinking about it,” Dani whispers. “Fuck.”

Jamie can’t help smile. She knows it isn’t the time, but Dani is the girl who says fudge sticks and gosh darnit, so she really can’t help but find it adorable when she swears. Owen tugs on her elbow and she leans in.

“She can’t keep staying there.”

“I’m aware,” she murmurs back, eyeing Dani as she drinks from her coffee near the counter. “That place is awful. People breaking in to rooms, fights, drugs.”

Owen looks at her with the most pointed look she has ever seen in her entire life. There’s a few seconds where they have a conversation with their eyes, and it gives her flashbacks to when she offered Dani a job in the first place.

“Owen. No.”

“Come on,” he tugs her further away from Dani, so that she can’t hear her. She looks half asleep leaning against the counter anyway, and Jamie doesn’t think her brain is currently engaged. “Just until we find her somewhere else to stay.”

“Can’t she stay with you?”

“Two rooms, two people. You have a spare.”

“It’s a fucking closet sized room Owen, we’d barely fit a single in there.”

“Better than my couch.”

Jamie sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “OK. Until we find her somewhere else. Damnation.”

She puts on her best smiling face and goes back to the counter. She knows that she hasn’t really put much effort into arguing, but honestly, she can’t see another option right now.

“So I’ll grab some clothes for you to change into, and you go get your stuff with Owen.”

“Won’t they just get back into my stuff tonight? The bugs?” Dani looks confused and very disgusted with the notion.

“Not if we wash it all and you don’t go back. They’ll die in the laundry. The eggs mostly live in bedding and curtains and stuff, so if you don’t go back, you won’t pick them up. We will have to clean out your suitcase though.”

Jamie absolutely, positively hates the defeated look on Dani’s face right now. She knows it so well, and it doesn’t belong on Dani Clayton. “Dani, you’re not going back there.”

“I don’t…” her bottom lip quivers. “I don’t exactly have somewhere else…”

“You can sleep on my spare. It’ll have to be a mattress on the floor but it’s clean and we’ll find you somewhere else soon. There’s a few rooms around for rent.”

“I can’t… I can’t do that. You already gave me a job, I can’t just…”

Jamie puts a hand on her bicep. “Hey, easy now.” Dani is standing but she’s swaying. “Lets just sort out today and tonight and go from there OK? One day at a time. You need sleep and we need to give the laundromat all our spare coins.” She uses the half grin that usually gets her what she wants, and is pleased to see that Dani in her exhausted state is not immune.

Owen takes Dani to get her things, because it’s easier that way, and Jamie flips her sign to closed and runs up to her flat. She has nowhere for Dani to sleep at the moment, but she shelves that as a future Jamie problem and grabs clothes instead.

She manages to make the place look somewhat tidy by the time Owen rocks back up, Dani stumbling in behind.

“Leave that stuff out there, I’ll sort it,” she hollers through the half open apartment door when she hears them trundling up the stairs. Dani, if anything, looks more tired, more dejected, than she did earlier.

“I have to get back downstairs, we have the lunch rush coming,” Owen says after shepherding Dani through the door. “I’ll bring you guys dinner tonight.”

“We’ll be right.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “No one needs your cooking on the back of a day like this Jamie.”

She turns to Dani, handing over a t-shirt, sweats and a towel. “Shower’s through there. Isn’t much, water pressure’s shite, but it’s not cold. Hot as you can stand it, if you want to be sure.”

Dani nods, and takes the proffered pile, staring at it before shuffling off to the shower. Jamie knows this look, knows this shuffle. Dani is just going through motions and it’s bloody heart breaking. While Dani showers she sorts her clothes into plastic bags. When Dani appears, in her sweats and t-shirt, still shuffling around but now looking like she might bold at any second, Jamie takes pity on her.

“Beds through there yeah. S’clean enough. Get some sleep.”

“Jamie I can’t take your bed.”

“It’s ten in the morning, I’m not using it. You should. We’ll sort something out for tonight. I’ll quickly nick down the laundromat and by the time you wake up we should be sorted.”

Dani looks at her then, looks at her with a face like she’s about to sway sideways and on to the floor. With a face like someone had taken her puppy and punted it like a football. Like Jamie was the only reason she wasn’t crumpled in a ball crying.

“Hey, Poppins, it’s fine. Really. Get some sleep.”

“OK.”

She steals the pile of clothes from outside the bathroom door, and hurries down the road. In the back of her head she’s acutely aware that the shop is closed but there doesn’t seem to be anyone trying to get in and she can’t find it in herself to truly care. Doesn’t take long to get Bill, the old man who minds the laundromat, to agree to watch the washing as it goes around. Jamie separates out the colours, and there doesn’t seem like there’s any special wash stuff in there, but she acknowledges that it’s possible she may destroy some of Dani’s clothes. Given that Dani probably would have incinerated the lot, she figures she’s still ahead.

She reopens the store, more for the principle of it, and sits around chewing her thumb until it becomes clear that she’s got no skin left before she gets to flesh. Customers come and go, Jamie doesn’t pay much attention, going through the motions. The store feels empty without Dani, and her worry fills the space.

Dani looks like Jamie used to look. Dani looks like Jamie used to feel. Dani has been doing this a lot lately, making Jamie reflect on things she thought were dead and buried. It makes her itch for a cigarette, but she can’t just nick out the back, she has to mind the store. How she managed this with such equanimity before Dani she doesn’t remember. It’s moderately ridiculous.

She closes up again at four, and goes to pick up the washed and dried clothes. She finds Mrs Patel from up the road in there, neatly folding the last of Dani’s clothes in a tidy pile.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that.” Jamie doesn’t know what to say. “Thank you.”

“Just keeping Bill company,” she smiles fondly at Jamie, who feels like a heel for never really having said more than two words to either of them.

“They belong to your lovely shop girl yes?” Of course they’d know Dani. Sweet sunshine Dani.

“Mmm, there was … water… damage, leaked in.” Jamie scrambles for a lie and bites her lip when it comes out only half believable. She used to be good at this shit. “Her clothes took the brunt.”

“Well you tell her I hope it’s all fixed.” She hands Jamie the bags of folded washing, so she thanks them yet again, slips Bill a tip and hot foots it back to the Florist before anyone else can blindside her with kindness, conversation or some other kind of human interaction.

When she drops back to the apartment, she tiptoes in and finds Dani fast asleep on her bed. Not in her bed, on top of it. Shaking her head, she covers her with the blanket from the back of the couch and tiptoes out again.

************************

“Fuck,” Jamie shakes her hand and sucks her finger, dancing from one foot to the other. “Fuckity, fuck, fuck.”   
  
“Good god Taylor its six o’clock at night, what the hell are you doing?”

Jamie turns to look at Owen, who is standing on the other side of the fence to her backyard looking at her with distinct amusement.

“Building shelves.”

“Building what?”

She waves a hand at the six wooden crates that she’s stacked two by three. It’s taken her half an hour to sand them until they won’t splinter anything, and pull out a few errant nails.

“Shelves. Don’t have a lot to work with but I reckon this will do.”

“Aren’t you supposed to hit the nail and not _your_ nail?” Owen looks so fucking smug she’s tempted to throw the hammer over the fence at him, but she needs it so she doesn’t.

“Shut up.”

“Why are you making shelves at six at night?”

“So Dani doesn’t have to keep her clothes in rubbish bags. Or suitcases.”

“That’s really lovely.”

She glares at him. “It’s not lovely, it’s evidence that my house has fuck all furniture in it and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Still pretty lovely.” He frowns. “Hang on a second eh.”

He’s gone then, and Jamie misses him. He’s a pillock and gives her endless rounds of shit, but he’s also her best friend. Right now she’s so damn well off kilter that his presence is calming. He comes back, after she’s nailed two more crates together successfully, and proffers a casserole dish covered in foil over the fence. “Dinner.”

“Oh my god you’re amazing. What is it?”

“Sausage and bean.”

“Marry me.”

He blushes. “You know my heart belongs to one woman and one woman only.”

“Gertrude.”

“Never gives me any trouble,” he agrees happily.

“You and that bloody rolling pin.” She knocks the last two crates together and picks the whole thing up, shaking it a little. “Good, solid doss house furniture.”

“I’m impressed.” He looks at her pointedly. “You’re a good friend.”

Jamie rubs her hand through her hair, ignoring the sawdust trail she’s leaving behind, and bites her lip. “I’m just…”

“She needs us.”

Jamie sighs. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Cos of all the people to lean on…”

“She has the best.”

“Can’t she stay with you and Hannah. You have like, a proper house and all.”

“And no spare beds.”

“Easy enough to fix.”

Owen adjusts his glasses and stares at her, yet again pointedly. “Are you suggesting I sleep with Dani?”

“I’m suggesting you stop pretending and ask Hannah out.”

He points a finger at her. “You, glasshouse, stones.”

“I’m not asking Hannah out!”

“I’ve seen how you look at her.”

“I have no such feelings towards Hannah and you know it.”

“And you know I wasn’t talking about Hannah.”

Jamie crosses the yard now, storming up to the fence until she’s right in Owen’s face. “Don’t say things like that.” It comes out as a hiss, through clenched teeth. “The last thing she needs right now is to think I’m trying something on. She needs a friend.”

Owen gives her a grin and wiggles his eyebrows. “Gotcha.”

“Oh my god.” Hands thrown in the air, she storms back to her makeshift shelves and balances the casserole on top. “Fuck off Owen.”

“You’re a good friend Jamie!” He hollers after her.

“Go away Owen.”

“The best.”

“Seriously Owen.”

“Gnight James!”

“Don’t call me that.”

He’s gone, and with it any excuse she has for not going back up to her apartment. She needs to, for so many more reasons than just because she lives there, but like the first days of Dani working with her, she finds herself torn in two. Doesn’t matter, because she has shelves and dinner to deliver.

Getting them up the stairs to her flat turns out to be an absolute bastard, but with some shuffling she manages. When she comes in, she notes that the door to the almost a balcony is open and through them she can see Dani propped up on her chair. She slides the shelves into the tiny living room and the casserole on to the kitchen counter.

“Owen made us grub.”

She shoves her hand into her back pockets, hanging back from the door lest Dani wish for some more alone time. Her apartment is tiny, and the ‘spare room’ that Owen has referred to will literally fit nothing more than a single bed and the shelves she’s so hastily constructed. She could throw a banana from the kitchen and hit Dani on the balcony with no trouble.

Dani turns her head, and from here Jamie can see the salty residue of tear tracks.

It makes her stomach turn knots.

“Hey, Dani. It’s OK right. Chin up and all that.” There is only room for one chair on the balcony but she crouches down next to it, lodging herself against the door frame and without thinking putting her hand on Dani’s knee. “Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out yeah?” Positive thinking has never been Jamie’s strong suit but she doesn’t know what else to say right now. Primary emotional support material she was not.

Dani isn’t crying now, she can see that now she’s closer. She has been crying, eyes red and swollen, but no current tears.

“I don’t deserve this,” she whispers.

“No, you don’t,” Jamie agrees.

Dani looks at her so sharply then she probably would have recoiled if she wasn’t wedged so tightly to the frame. It’s a searching look, half fear and half misery, all couched in something Jamie can’t quite put her finger on.

“I mean I don’t deserve to be here. With you. All the help you’ve given me. You and Owen and Hannah but… mostly you.”

“Oh, OH!” Jamie squeezes gently with her thumb on Dani’s knee. She’s trying very hard not to notice how warm it is under her hand, but it’s tingling up her arm anyway. “Fuck, not sure you’ve lucked out there Poppins.” She waves her arm around self-deprecatingly.

“I mean, other people have actual furniture and groceries in the fridge.”

Dani smiles at her. “Stop it. You’ve been amazing.”

Jamie, never great at taking compliments, stumbles to her feet. “Come inside, we should eat before it gets too cold. Although it tastes pretty bloody good cold.”

Dani does come inside then, stops as Jamie peels the foil off the casserole, mouth watering at the scent.

“What’s this,” Dani says softly.

“Sausage and bean he said.”

“No, these.”

Jamie turns, sees her hand on the shelves.

“Sorry, bit of a slap together job but thought you could use them for your clothes. At least until we find something better or you find somewhere a bit less like a squat house.”

“Jamie...” Dani looks like she’s about to cry again. “This is…”

“I know, it’s pretty awful, but I only had the flower crates to work with and no time to paint it. I did sand it back though so your clothes should be ok and -”

“It’s everything.” Dani _is_ crying now, a few loose tears shifting over her perfect cheeks. Jamie has to fight the urge to gather her up, in to her arms. “You made me shelves.”

“They’re just…” The agitation swirls in Jamie, making her shove her hands in her pocket to stop from cracking her knuckles or biting her thumb. “Shelves.”

“They’re lovely.”

“They really aren’t. They’re made of fucking crates.”

Dani looks at her, another tear spilling down that perfect cheek and Jamie can’t stand it any more. She steps forward and pulls her into a hug. “Hey. It’s OK. Really.”

Dani crumples a little, folding in to Jamie until she has no choice but to shuffle them awkwardly around to the couch or risk them ending up in a pile on the floor. Dani seems glued to her shoulder now, so she just holds her, patting her back in a way that she hopes is as soothing as she intends.

“Dani,” she murmurs after awhile.

She doesn’t really need Dani to talk. In fact, sitting here, holding her and inhaling the unique combination of Dani Clayton and Jamie’s own shampoo is doing wonderful things to her olfactory nodes, but she thinks that Dani probably should talk.

Dani does pull back, sniffling, eyes back to being as red as before. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Just worried about you.”

Dani looks like she’s about to object but then, under the circumstances concedes without a single word. Jamie can read it on her face.

“I ran away, you know. From everything back home. I just couldn’t stay there any more and I thought that if I came here, put an ocean between me and it, I’d be ok.” Her bottom lip wobbles. “But I can’t run from it. My best friend died because I lied to him for so long. So long. And then I come here and, and, London wasn’t great, and I thought hey, yeah, I deserve that. But then I come out to Bly, running away again I suppose.” She laughs at herself, a short, hollow laugh so full of loathing that Jamie has to touch her arm.

“Then I met Hannah, and Owen. I thought, how can these people exist, they’re so _nice.”_

“They really fucking are. Like, disgustingly so.”

“And then I met you and…”

“You realised that assholes sometimes grow people around them?” Jamie teases.

“You’re not an asshole.”

“I was pretty mean to you that first week. You didn’t deserve that.”

“You like things done a certain way, your way. It’s your shop, that’s fair enough.”

“Could have been nicer,” Jamie says softly, rubbing her thumb back and forth.

“I think by now I can safely say that you can’t be nicer than you are now. Fuck Jamie, you’re letting me sleep in your spare room.”

Jamie shrugs. “Hardly the Ritz.”

“Stop.” Dani says it very gently, but quite surprisingly firmly. “Stop saying awful things about yourself. You’ve been so amazing, I don’t know how I’d have gotten through today, this week, last week without you.”

It makes Jamie blush, because she wants to argue but she also thinks Dani may kill her if she does. “Just helping a friend in need.”

Dani shifts, moving to sit cross legged on the couch to Jamie’s half slouched position. “Part of me thinks you should let me drown. That it would be justice.”

Oh boy does Jamie know that feeling. She’s floated in it, practically doused herself in it for most of her life. She also knows the damage it wreaks, the way the self hate sinks so deep into your skin that it tattooes you until you’re grey at the edges.

“Someone quite wise once told me: You can’t choose when the lifeboat comes.”

As statements go, it’s fairly left field, so Jamie understands why Dani is staring at her in utter confusion.

“Look she had a painting of the Titanic on the wall, so she may have been pulling shite out of the air, but, it resonated with me,” Jamie grins wryly. “Shit just happens Poppins. Life doesn’t line things up for us, it doesn’t do fair and it doesn’t do justice, it just does. So when someone throws you a rope, you have a choice: you grab it or you drown.”

She can see Dani swallow. She can see her throat move as the takes what Jamie has said and pulls it in, swirls it around in her overactive brain and lets it sit for a moment.

“Thank you then, for being my lifeboat.”

“I’m no dashing prince, but I reckon we can help you stay above water until you can swim yeah? Owen, Hannah, me?” Right now, right now Jamie needs to bring the others in because the gravity well this conversation has created is threatening to become a fucking singularity.

Dani nods, but her cheeks are now glowing with something not fresh pain, and her eyes are bright without unshed tears. “OK.”

****************************************

“ _Yours is the corner bed. Lights out from now. Don’t leave the room.”_

_The door slams shut behind her as Jamie clutches her bag to her chest. It’s not even a bag, it’s a fucking garbage bag, filled with the few clothes and possessions she still owns. A plastic fucking garbage bag._

_Because she’s trash now._

_It’s not a bed, she can see that in the dim street light filtering through from the window with no curtains. It’s a mattress on the floor and she isn’t even sure it has a sheet. There are at least four others in the room and they all seem to be occupied._

_Jamie shuffles over, sits on the bed. It does have a sheet, one fitted sheet, but even from here she can see a stain and her hand hits a crust of some kind when she touches it. She pulls back, like she’s been burned._

_She can’t stay here. How can she stay here?_

_Someone shifts on one of the other mattresses, just a shape in the gloom and Jamie stiffens._

_Plan. She needs a plan._

_OK. She stays here, like this tonight. It’s warm. Well, it’s not the cold of outside, even if it’s not exactly warm. She can stay sitting up and pull the blanket around her, keep a bit warm, stay awake. Sneak out at day break and make a run for it. If she can find her way back home her dad has to take her right? He’s her dad. She’ll tell him about this house, and about the sheets, and how hungry she is from no dinner, and he’ll take her back. Just the two of them. Because Mikey is well gone by now and Denny can just fuck off. Maybe they can get Mikey back. She knows, deep down, that it won’t happen. Her dad won’t take her and she’s not getting Mikey back. It’s just her now. Just Jamie._

_She feels it then, the tears spill down her cheeks. Weeks and weeks of holding it together in the group home. That awful, awful building filled with awful people and a routine made to grind her into the dust. Bruises have bloomed on her skin, whispered insults. She’s missing things, clothes, her favourite book, snatched in the night._

_She hugs her bag closer to her chest. Never again._

_But she can’t help it when a sob escapes. She can’t help it when her tears make her shake and the noise just won’t stay inside. She freezes when she sees that shape move again, in the mattress closest to hers. It doesn’t stop the tears but now they’re ice cold with fear and rage and so much sadness._

“ _New kid?”_

_It’s very quiet, sleepy, because she’s clearly woken them. A girl though. Reassuring._

_She sniffs and makes a non-commital noise._

“ _I wouldn’t cry if I was you. Or if you do, do it into the pillow like the rest of us.”_

_She swallows. “Why?”_

“ _Ever heard the phrase ‘I’ll give you something to cry about?’”_

_Yes. Yes she has. “Mmhmm”_

“ _In this house, if you disturb them, they really will. Worse than you can possibly imagine. So if I was you I’d lie down and get some sleep because you’ll be up with the sun and you’ll want some rest.”_

_It’s said super low, almost on the edge of hearing, but it’s the most compassion that Jamie has had in weeks. The most anyone has actually cared. Not the damn social worker, with her fake smile and promise of a good home (Ha!), or anybody who has asked her any questions or pretended her life was going to improve from here. No, this random friend in the dark giving her useful advice._

“ _Oh and kid, the front door is deadbolted. So’s the back. Wait till school if you’re going to run.”_

_The figure goes back to sleeping now, or so Jamie thinks._

_Eventually she shuffles down in the bed, still gripping her garbage bag like a fucking kid with a teddy bear._

_Wait for school. Then she’ll run. Right._


	7. In Which Jamie Wakes Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie can't run from herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter (for me anyway), but an important one. 
> 
> CN: Definite implied child abuse and implied sexual assault. In no way, shape or form do I go into detail, nor will I. If you're looking to avoid, just don't read the italicised part. 
> 
> Thanks for all your amazing comments. This story is a slow meander through my Jamie loving heart and i'm so grateful that people are coming along

The most frightening thing about living with Dani is how quickly it becomes so very easy. Dani is slowly coming back in to herself, like a shadow becoming more opaque, less blurry at the edges. She isn’t quite herself, and Jamie can see that, but the trajectory is distinctly upwards now.

Owen turns up on Tuesday with a damn bed. Jamie had spent an uncomfortable night on her slightly too short even for her couch, and knew she’d be arguing with Dani over who had it the second night, when he just turns up with a bed. It’s a small single futon, with a mattress, and he’s grinning like a fool as he manoeuvres it into Jamie’s tiny flat and into the tiny room. It fits, just. With the makeshift shelves shoved against the other wall, the room basically has enough room for one person to turn around on the spot but it fits. So Dani moves in.

The plan, reiterated multiple times by one or the other of them, is for Dani to find a sensible, reasonably priced room in town. The issue is: there aren’t any. Bly hasn’t had a profusion of visitors and the rooms have slowly been sucked up by the people moving in and out over time. There just isn’t any accommodation. One or two known people have said they may have a room for rent once their child/lodger/mother-in-law moves out but for now, there’s nothing. Nothing but the disgusting hostel that there’s no way they’re letting Dani move back to.

The other problem, of course, is that it’s working. As Owen has said, with a twinkle in his eye and deserving of a swift kick to the ankle – why fix something that isn’t broken. Just because he’s right doesn’t mean Jamie has to tell him that.

Dani moves in her space, once Jamie lets her, with grace and ease. The fridge miraculously has groceries in it now, and she refuses money for them. Dani can cook, in a way that leaves Jamie a bit awestruck, and she makes Jamie eat it. Jamie gets her revenge by setting the rent absurdly low and forgetting to ask for it every week. She doesn’t need to – Dani leaves it in an envelope on the counter. Jamie opens the store in the mornings, letting Dani take her time to get up, move about. Despite no longer needing to, the habit of waking early hasn’t left so she spends a few hours in her greenhouse, absorbing peace as she can.

Three weeks, three long weeks, and it’s working far too well. Jamie leaves at four every afternoon to head to the Manor, instead of getting up at the asscrack of dawn. Dani closes the shop, reconciles everything, and Jamie is back by six. Not because she has to be, not because she’s promised to be, but because her body and mind will her there, take her there and deliver her there despite herself. Dinner will be ready at quarter past, and she can’t disappoint Dani.

Its too easy. Too, too easy.

On weekends, Dani reads, Dani cleans, Dani stretches out on the couch and watches old black and white movies that make her smile. She smiles and Jamie’s heart clenches in her chest like someone has reached through her sternum and gripped it with fingers. They watch movies together, a bowl of popcorn separating them. They compare books, swap books, Jamie’s small collection haphazardly strewn on plank and brick shelves in the living room. She thinks it might be growing, finds second hand books she knows she hasn’t bought but reads anyway. Her fingers trace the pages and text, knowing Dani has been here before. Sometimes she has to fight the urge to hand Dani a pencil and beg her to leave her thoughts in the margins, so Jamie can trace them too.

They have dinner with Owen and Hannah, nights at the pub with beers and laughter. She takes Dani up to the Manor on one weekend, puts her to work, and enjoys the companionship so much she wonders if it’s going to break her.

It probably will break her, in the end. That’s what she sees coming. Dani won’t be here forever and the yawning chasm that was her life prior seems to loom in the background. Melodramatic, she knows. Her life wasn’t bad. It was calm, quiet, boring – just how she liked it. A marked difference to her chaotic past and the pain it beheld. It was nice, having a day to day existence that was predictable and bland, no fear of an arrow to the chest from an unexpected angle. The problem is, now her life is still predictable, and theoretically boring, but it’s also much, much nicer. She smiles every day now, sinking in to a happy feeling she can almost taste.

Dani fits. In her space, Dani fits and it’s now their space and it’s too easy. When it’s over, Jamie knows it will burn.

It’s all going very well, swimmingly one might say.

Until she wakes up screaming one night, the fear ricocheting through her like a pinball. She feels the ice in her veins, the sweat on her skin, and the taste of bile in her mouth like the memories she had been stuck in. Nightmares are not foreign to Jamie, too familiar to even count. These though, these body freezing, trapped dreams where she can’t get away from memories so real they leave indents on her skin, they’re much rarer.

One of her foster mothers called them a Screaming Meemie. She’d looked it up later, in a book in the library where she hid on a regular basis. Apparently it was a name for an old world war one artillery shell, the noise it made as it went flying over head. Jamie concured – her brain felt like a pockmarked battle ground at the best of times.

She’s breathing hard now, throat dry and heart pounding, until she hears the tentative noise from the doorway. “Jamie? You ok?”

“Shit,” she mutters under her breath. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“Uh, yeah. You were…,” Dani steps forward and in the light filtering through the flimsy curtains on Jamie’s window, she can see the outline. “You screamed.”

“Shit.” She runs a hand across her face, still plastered in sweat. She needs a shower. “I’m fine. You can head back to bed, I’m sorry.”

Jamie gets up, heads to the kitchen and gets a drink, thinks she might shower. She’s peripherally aware of Dani hovering in the doorway to her own room, so she turns, leans against the counter. “Sorry, really.”

“You don’t need to be. I just… wanted to make sure you’re OK”

Jamie gives a short hollow laugh. “Peachy.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I can say with absolute certainty that I do not.” It comes out so hard, so fast, like the artillery shells she dodges in her dreams, that she feels immediately guilty. “Thank you though, for offering. Think I’ll just wash it off in the shower and try to get some sleep.”

Dani nods, and Jamie smiles at her, hoping that it’ll undo some of her snark. Dani doesn’t seem to mind, but Jamie can still see the worry on her face. She tries to imagine how she’d feel if Dani woke her up screaming and gets it, kind of. She’s pretty sure that her feelings towards Dani are a little different to Dani’s feelings towards her.

She doubts that Dani is filled with the same urge to blunt the edges of the harsh world that Jamie is. She see’s Dani struggling, wants to make her a soft place to land. She knows, instinctively, that you can’t fix someone else, can’t change them, but you can make it easier for them while they go through it. She also knows that underneath all of that is a growing regard for Dani she can’t shake.

Dani is mostly just filled with gratitude she reckons.

The shower helps, or at least makes her less sticky and warm. By the time she’s back in bed, clean clothes and on the other side where the sheets aren’t damp still, she feels almost back to human. Sleep does not come easy, and in the morning she barely feels like it’s come at all. There’s always the haunting, in the back of her head, that whispers to her for days after one of these. Jamie does what Jamie does best, she throws herself in to work with a cheerful grin and an absolute deep well of ability to pretend that nothing is wrong.

********************************

_Too many houses. Too many times moving back and forth. Jamie has acquired a bag now, a backpack thing from one of the few decent places she’s stayed. Mostly they’re dumps, a lot worse than where she grew up, but some of the houses are nice. It’s at the second house that’s nice that she learns to be highly suspicious of the nice ones._

_A door-handle turning in the night makes her startle awake. There’s a creak, as the floorboards move and a slim handle of light comes through the crack. She lies in bed, confused and half asleep until the bed dips beside her and there’s a weight against her side. Then there’s a hand on her leg._

_She shoots out of bed so fast she’s across the room in a second, staring hard at the shape on her bed._

“ _What the fuck.”_

_It’s a week before it happens again. She learns quickly to shove a chair under the door-handle, breathing shallow into the night air as the handle wriggles and fights. The chair wins but Jamie doesn’t sleep._

_She gets out of that one by breaking three windows and being sent back to the group home, with a shiny new backpack for her trouble._

_Too many hands, too many times of squeezing out of spaces made too small for her, when she’s too small for this world. Too many times she’s trembled in someone else’s house, someone else’s blankets her only shield against the cold and the wandering, wandering hands._

_Too many times until it cracks her open, the fear and the bile spewing out. She’s a problem child now, breaking her bounds and impossible to place. Too many times subsumed to the dark for her not to run. Too many times until just once, she can’t hide fast enough and she has to hide inside her own head._

_Too many times until she can’t take it any more and she runs for good. The last house, a good christian couple with good christian concern and too much fear in the night. A door that does not lock. A good christian husband with too much time and too many ideas. Too much fear not to wait until pay day when the wallet is fat with cash and it’s too easy to take the whole lot, whatever she can find hidden around the house at two am, and sneak out the bathroom window, good old backpack in hand._

_Too easy to hop a train to London, freer than she’s been in forever. Too easy not to see just how hard it’s about to get._


	8. In Which There is Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunk Dani is adorable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update brought to you by the feet of my two year old, because he can't keep them off my damn keyboard.   
> Thanks for all the amazing comments. They feed me and make me keep writing, because I really enjoy writing this one at the moment. 
> 
> CN for some light crime and kissing, but no real severe trauma. 
> 
> Edited by myself so probably some errors in there somewhere

_London is busy, and it’s fast. It’s blurred edges and sharp corners. It’s freedom and it’s exhilarating and Jamie loves it. She doesn’t have much cash in her pocket, but it’s not hard to find a group of people to follow around, blend in with. She’s smart, Jamie Taylor, and can spot the group she needs from a distance. She finds somewhere to bed down, in a corner, and they call her new girl. She’s been new girl for so long now that she doesn’t mind answering to it._

_Food can be hard to scrounge up, but there’s enough to be found dumpster diving, begging at restaurant back doors, stealing what she can. She gets herself a knife, a small thing she can palm easily. The group she tags along behind adopts her without too much fuss, and she finds if she doesn’t stray too far, she doesn’t get into too much trouble._

_They squat in an old abandoned building, boarded up with rats for company. The mattresses and sheets are no better than the countless foster homes she’s been in, except that here its by her choice. Here if she wants to leave, she just walks out the front door. Well, out the hole in the side of the building._

_She learns a lot of things in London, does Jamie. Huddled around makeshift fires, with stolen grog and cigarettes, she learns what it’s like to have someone’s arm around her shoulder and not hate it. She learns that a girl, soft and sweet, tracing her tongue across Jamie’s lips makes her insides dance in a way she didn’t know she could like._

_On a bed, in a house, with some girl she doesn’t even know the name of, she discovers what sweat, and fingers, and tongues and skin can make._

_There’s enough girls here, moving in and out of the circles she finds herself in. Most aren’t homeless, just tagging along for the fun, and the thrills. Jamie finds enough who are willing to let Jamie practice on them for the thrills until she gets really, really good with her hands. Even better with her mouth. There’s booze and there’s girls and there’s food, stolen, begged, borrowed, given, and there’s no one to tell her what to do or where to go._

_There’s just Jamie._

_There’s bruises and running across crowded streets and squares, fleeing with a pocket of someone else’s things and a grin on her face. Freedom never tasted so good as it does here._

_She sees her first, across a crowded room. She knows Trent. Trent buys things she nicks sometimes, gives her a good price. She’s never seen this girl though, tucked under Trent’s arm as he lounges on a couch in the slop house. Jamie has moved up in the world, no longer relegated to mattress in an abandoned building but now with friends. She gets her own single bed in this house, as long as she keeps things moving, does little jobs for friends, keeps the right word in the right place._

_But she’s never seen_ her _before. Small, short, smaller than Jamie anyway which is practically impossible. She’s seventeen now, but they still call her kid, so short and slight she can fit through gaps others can’t. Comes in handy. This girl though, this girl is tiny._

_Blond hair, short, peroxide, trying to be Annie Lennox or Madonna, who knows, but it suits her, this girl. She’s tucked into an old green military surplus coat that’s at least three sizes to big but she when turns, looks in Jamie’s direction and smiles, it fills the world._

_Jamie swears her heart stops._

_A girl, she’s met her before, fucked her before too she thinks, sidles up and throws an arm around Jamie’s waist. A quick look confirms the girl is wasted, high as a kite but she’s warm and she’s cuddling in so Jamie lets her while she smiles back. Back at the girl with ice blue eyes, a megawatt smile, and the cutest dimples that Jamie has ever seen._

_Her name is Katie, and she’s fucking gorgeous. Trent is doing business with Geoff, who has the big bedroom in the house. He’s an OK dude, doesn’t give Jamie any guff and she helps him out from time to time. Trent she’s more wary of. He’s into things bigger than she wants to be a part of, but Katie, Katie is like sunshine and she can’t help but get pulled towards her._

_Jamie doesn’t do girlfriends. She doesn’t to friends who are girls, she certainly doesn’t do girly and she doesn’t do girlfriends. The blokes always have some girl on their arm, hanging off, the latest in a line of “my woman” candidates. Jamie doesn’t keep track of them. The girls here are mostly not worth her attention, all hangers on and no brains. Half of them don’t even need to be out on the streets, could be home tucked up with mum and dad. She knows she and the others are just a bit of rough trade for them, and she disdains the stupidity. Of course she fucks them when they ask, she’s not that much of a paragon, but she doesn’t give them any thought._

_Except Katie._

_When Katie wants to go out and eat, Jamie follows along like a love sick puppy. When Katie is bored by Trent, and wants to go to a movie, Jamie is the one she drags out, forcing her to sit through another horrendous rom com, hoping ridiculously that their hands will brush in the shared popcorn bucket._

_If Katie wants to curl up against her on the couch, fall asleep while Trent’s doing crack in the kitchen, who is Jamie to say no. If Katie gravitates to her room, curls up on her bed, and draws patterns on her bedspread while bemoaning the lack of something to do, well, who is Jamie to say no._

_It’s dangerous, this longing she finds inside her. Nothing has ever felt like this before. She finds she’s not drifting towards girls just because now, instead finding excuses to be at home, just in case Katie is there. She finds that the girls seem to vanish anyway, because Katie has a way of snarling, glaring, and they flee as Katie marks Jamie as hers for that moment. If Katie claims Jamie as hers, who is Jamie to say no._

*****************************

“Here’s yours, and a sherry for you Hannah, cider for the blonde, and voila,” Jamie sits down with a decided thud and drinks down approximately a third of her ale before looking at her three friends who are now looking at her with varying levels of amusement on their face. “What?”  
  


“Sat down pretty hard is all.”

“Does my hair colour go with my drink choice?”

“Thanks.”

She gives Hannah a smile for the last one, glares at Owen and turns to Dani. “Nope. Your inability to hold down more than two without getting hilariously tipsy might be related though.”

“I do not!”

“She doth protest too much methinks.”

Dani looks to Owen for help but he just drinks his own cider and smiles into the glass. “Sorry love, she’s not wrong here.”

“I had three the other night!”

“And you were delightfully tipsy.”

“Was not.”

“I had to walk behind you on the stairs to make sure you didn’t sway too hard and fall backwards.”

“I was fine,” Dani protests. “I was… a little drunk maybe, but fine.”

“You made up a poem about the fern in the kitchen,” Jamie laughs.

“Ludwig deserves it. He’s a fine fern.”

Hannah raises an eyebrow. “You named the fern?”

“You named him Ludwig?” Owen chimes in.

Jamie is laughing now, avoiding Dani’s elbow to her ribs. It’s been a long day. Delivery days always were, but she’d had to get up early for the manor, and three of the deliveries had been incorrect requiring multiple phone calls and re-deliveries. It had been a really long day, and at the end of it, instead of wanting to bury herself alone upstairs, she’s gone to the pub.

Worse still, she wants to be here. She wants to sit next to Dani and drink her beer, fatigued but happy. She wants to coast on the memory at the edge of her mind, of Dani attending to customers so damn competently while Jamie sorts out the rest. She wants the symbiosis.

She’s fucked.

In the end, she drink her ale down slowly. She’s never been one for getting plastered, likes being in control far too much. Dani, as it turns out, has approximately no alcohol tolerance and is delightfully tipsy heading for drunk when they all call it an evening.

“Need to get some food into you Poppins. Think we’ve got leftovers yeah?” She has Dani by the elbow because Dani is swaying slightly with a stupid grin on her face. It’s lopsided and larger than it needs to be and a complicated thing made of plush lips and teeth and Dani’s glowing eyes and it is far more adorable than any grin has the right to be.

“Lasagne. We gots lasagne.”

Jamie laughs. “We gots?”

“Words are hard Jamie.” She sways a little more as Jamie gets them both to the stairs out the back, the ones that lead up to her flat. Jamie grips her arm this time as Dani leans into her and for the umpteenth time, Jamie wonders what perfume she wears. Can’t abide flowery scents, Jamie, despite her love of them in the wild. On a woman they always seem cloying and fake. Dani doesn’t smell like flowers. She smells like a summer brook, and petrichor and something so fresh and enticing.

Jamie helps her up the stairs.

At the door, she’s juggling her keys when she feels Dani lean into her further, and arms wrap around her waist.

“Alright there?” She laughs, trying to tamp down the urge to return the favour and just hold Dani close.

“Think that last cider may have hit.”

Jamie chuckles again, and loops an arm around her waist to keep Dani upright while still getting the door open. They stumble inside, because it’s like a three legged race by now and keeping Dani upright takes work.

“OK, couch for you and I’ll get lasagne.”

Food, water (lots), and aspirin, is what Jamie thinks they’re going to need. Perhaps the aspirin might wait for the morning.

Dani has both her arms around Jamie’s waist now, and is leaning in more, tucking her face into the nook between neck and shoulder, bumping Jamie’s collarbone with that delicate nose. Jamie can’t help her sharp intake of breath, she’s only human.

Dani in her arms is ridiculous. Dani in her arms is amazing. Dani in her arms feels more right than anything has felt in a million years, possibly ever. For a few moments, Jamie wraps her arms around Dani and holds her, closing her eyes to the satisfied sigh it brings out from Dani. The moment hangs, and Jamie doesn’t know for how long because she’s so busy cataloging every sensation of having Dani pressed against her, that she doesn’t pay attention. She reluctantly, but gently pulls away.

“C’mon, couch.”

The noise Dani makes is both indignant and undignified and it makes Jamie laugh again.

“Like hugging you.”

“Yeah, I’m a regular teddy bear. You need to eat and then bed.”

Dani gives her a look, as she sits on the couch red cheeked, bright eyed and positively soused. Had Dani been sober, the look may have been subtle, possibly even flirtatious. Right now, it’s just hilarious. And very, very, very frightening.

Jamie flees to the kitchen.

She had, up to this point, considered that Dani’s affections and feelings were completely platonic. She knew that gratitude, completely unnecessary but also persistent, had welled up and wouldn’t be tamped down. She would have happily put the cuddles down to a very drunk Dani and need for interpersonal contact.

The look that Dani had given her though, that had been seven shades of something more.

As she busies herself making lasagne, she tries not to notice the trembling in her own hands. Dani was straight. Dani was her employee. Dani was very fucking drunk.

Or maybe, just maybe, Jamie was a safe experiment.

She stops then, mid food prep, and stares at the wall for a good, hard second.

That made sense. An experiment. She’d been someone’s girl experiment before, more than once. For awhile there, it was a bit of a habit, jumping in to bed with supposedly very straight women and giving them a night of orgasms and a cheeky goodbye in the morning. As far as nights went, they hadn’t been terrible – until she’d decided that perhaps it might be nice to have someone touch her too and had let the habit slowly fall by the wayside.

She finishes putting together too plates and finds Dani, still thankfully conscious, on the couch staring at her own hands.

“You need to eat this.”

Thankfully, she does, without any argument and without needing help. There’s a bit of lasagne that ends up places that aren’t Dani’s mouth or the plate, but even that’s just endearing at this point. Jamie eats her dinner with an amused smile on her face.

Dinner is finished when Dani stands up abruptly, sways a bit, and declares “We should dance. Music.”

Jamie blinks, puts her own plate down on the table and cocks an eyebrow. “Dance?”

“Yeah! Dance! C’mon Jamie, dance with me.”

There is no music, but that doesn’t stop Dani from starting to dance. She must have had some lessons at some point because Jamie is expecting the equivalent of a newborn foal and is surprised to find that Dani has both rhythm and music.

Jamie does not.

“Got two left feet Clayton. You don’t wanna dance with me.”

“I doooooo”

Taking no for an answer doesn’t seem to be on the cards because she grabs Jamie by the hand and hauls her off the couch, pulling them both backwards until the offending furniture is far enough away. The flat is tiny, it puts them in one small corner and now Jamie is pulled in to Dani’s body before she can register what’s happening.

Arms go around her neck and swaying begins.

“Dance with me,” whispered in to her neck.

Fuck.

Jamie’s hands move without her brain bidding them to, traitorous limbs that move to Dani’s waist and rest there gently, feeling the swaying movement under them.

Fuck.

“Dani,”she whispers. This is dangerous, this is beyond dangerous. Dani is drunk, and warm and soft in her arms and has pulled them so close together air can’t breath between them. Dani has no idea what she’s doing but the well of want and need and loss and desire is bubbling inside Jamie and it’s dangerous.

Dani moves them, and Jamie shuffles along. She should stop this. Every second she thinks she should stop this but Dani’s breath is warm on her neck and she smells so good, her raspberry shampoo and that same old Dani scent that’s so enticing.

One minute, that’s what she’ll give herself.

“Ow.”

Jamie pulls back. “Sorry, I did say I had two left feet.”

“I think you broke _my_ left foot,” Dani is grinning though, and seems to be unhurt so Jamie just blushes and steps away mumbling.

“You need to get some sleep. That hangover is going to be a killer in the morning.”

She gets Dani to drink water, quite a lot, standing over the sink and watching more than a bit land back in the sink. Getting her into the tiny bedroom and considering how to negotiate getting her into pyjamas is another thing entirely. She settles on grabbing sleep stuff from Dani’s shelves, where she keeps her clothes neatly stacked with a pile books on the very top, and pushing them into Dani’s hands saying “pyjamas” before fleeing to the living room and shutting the door behind her.

There are lines she can’t cross, and boundaries she can’t push, and the thought of taking Dani’s clothes off for her, even as a friend, is too much right now. She can’t trust herself not to look, not to use her eyes to take in all the things her hands and mouth can’t have. Dani should be able to trust her.

After five or so minutes she hears a bang and a muttered curse.

“Dani?”

There’s another muffled curse, so she opens the door.

Dani has managed to shed her clothes and don some flannel pants. She has, nonsensically, decided to put the top on without undoing the buttons, and is currently tangled and lost in it, arms flailing and head nowhere to be seen.

Because the gods seem to be being kind to Jamie today, she’s facing away.

Shutting her eyes lest Dani spin around suddenly, Jamie finds her with hands and then has to crack open slightly to see what she’s doing. With finesse she didn’t even know she possesses, she manages to get Dani into her top without ruining her ability to function from a set of perfect breasts. She hasn’t even seen them but she knows, she knows they’re perfect.

Tucking Dani in to bed is too easy. The way she sleepily smiles up at Jamie, even as her eyes droop. The way she mumbles nonsense as Jamie’s fingers, betraying her once again, brush the hair off Dani’s forehead.

“Sleep Poppins.”

She sneaks out, and Dani is asleep before she’s gotten to the door. Jamie thinks that it’s probably a good thing that one of them will sleep tonight because fuck knows she won’t. The balcony beckons, with it’s cold night air, a much needed bite and wake up call.

She can’t do this. She can’t feel this way about Dani but it keeps on creeping in. It’s hard not to, when Dani is smart and funny, and warm and so full of life. Jamie finds herself drawn, the veritable moth to the flame, but its too dangerous. Jamie has a way of breaking everything she touches. It’s as though the universe gave her the greenest thumb in existence, the gods saying “ _You will be able to coax life from the smallest seed, the merest leafling.”_ They left out the other, slightly more pertinent point, that slowly everything else around her would crumble to nothing like coal dust. Inevitably.

Two years since they all left the Manor. Two years of nothing having turned to shit. Jamie has sat in stasis barely willing to breathe lest the gush push the air like a butterfly flapping its wings and in three months the tornado eats her alive. Then Dani.

She will let Dani break her, she thinks, before she ever has a chance to break Dani.

Somethings are too important to turn to dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A massive thanks to InYourBrain - she knows what she gave.


	9. In Which There is Movement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A step forward, a step backwards and the wind of change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your lovely comments. They seriously feed me. 
> 
> Rather enjoying writing this so it makes me so happy y'all are enjoying reading it too. 
> 
> CN for very mild kinda smut, a mention of power imbalance and sexual assault and a sad Jamie

“I was thinking we could all take a weekend away,” Owen is sitting back in his chair, looking supremely happy with himself and like a man full of good food. Jamie picks the plates up off his and Hannah’s small dining table and takes them to the kitchen, smiling at Dani when she steps in to help.

“Leave the dishes dear, I’ll do them later,” Hannah waves.

“You cooked, we clean, that’s the deal.” She looks at Dani. “I’ll wash, you’re shit at it.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad!”

“Tell that to my broken crockery,” she ribs gently.

“You mean your mismatched op shop collection?” Owen grins at her. “How sad for you.”

“One plate,” Dani mutters, “I broke one plate and I replaced it.”

Jamie shakes her head. “Just kidding with ya Poppins. And you really don’t have to replace my 10p plates. God knows I’ve broken enough of them.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, I thought it would be nice to get away for a weekend. Out of Bly and all that, the four of us.” Owen twists around in his chair and he’s looking at Hannah who is drinking her red wine and not looking back at him. Jamie can see the wistful nature in his gaze and knows that whatever he’s proposing, she’s going to find it very hard to say no now. Not much of a wingman, Jamie Taylor, but she’ll do her best for Owen.

“What, like camping?” She suggests.

“No,” Hannah and Dani chime in simultaneously.

Hannah, that’s expected. Jamie turns to look at Dani with curiosity. “Don’t like camping?”

“Well,” she says, somewhat dubiously, “I’ve only done it once and I got eaten alive by mosquitoes, the sausages were raw and I got blisters. Who wants to hike for six hours to sleep on the ground?”

Jamie raises an eyebrow. “Hike for six hours? Oh no. You’ve definitely been doing camping wrong.”

“I have?”

“You drive in, sit in chairs, drink lots of wine, have a fire and then sleep on air mattresses. There’s no hiking involved in our camping.”

“No camping,” Hannah reiterates from her chair.

“Actually I was thinking about maybe a trip up to London. Dinner at a nice restaurant, stay in a hotel, do a museum for Dani, maybe a show.” Owen is looking at Hannah again and Jamie can’t help smile at his dopey loving face. It’s pretty clear that this idea has been manufactured purely for Hannah, and that’s adorable in itself. Of course the pillock couldn’t do it by himself, having to drag Dani and Jamie in with him.

Jamie wants to hug him and kill him in equal measure. A romantic weekend in London with a girl she can’t have is definitely not what she needs now or, frankly, ever.

“Sounds lovely,” is what she says. She looks at Dani to get an agreement and is surprised to see that there’s a troubled look to her, not the hopeful happy excitement she expected. “Hey, you alright?”

  
Dani readjusts her expression, almost instantly, and what’s there is now what Jamie would define as a mask. She’s getting good at reading Dani. She thinks, perhaps, that not many people see how often that mask is in place but Jamie can pick it now. She wonders if Dani knows that Jamie can tell.

“Fine, fine. Sounds… lovely.” She smiles at Jamie and finishes drying the last plate before stacking it away.

It’s only back in their own apartment that Jamie can’t let it go, and has to catch Dani gently by the sleeve to pull her around. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Dani frowns at her, hanging up her coat and readjusting her hair. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you don’t want to go on a weekend away but you’re pretending you do.” Sometimes bluntness has it’s place.

Dani looks at her, gauging her reaction and assessing that no, she’s not going to be able to fox Jamie on this one. Jamie wonders if anyone’s ever really managed to call Dani out like this, penetrate that invisible shell that she’s carefully constructed around her. She tries not to focus on the tiny bit of pride she has over it.

“Just left London a bit raw. Not sure I feel like heading back.”

Jamie nods. “Easy enough to fix, I’ll suggest Manchester instead. Good scene there, would that be ok?”

Dani looks so relieved that Jamie wants to hug her again, but she doesn’t.

“Do you want to talk about it? London?”

Dani sighs and sits on the couch, Jamie perching herself at the other end. There’s something about this that feels important. Dani, incrementally standing herself up again, needs someone to be open with. She’s chosen Jamie and Jamie won’t let her down, not in this. Even if Dani has picked the most ludicrous choice available, whats done is done.

“The way I left wasn’t… great,” Dani admitted. “It was pretty awful to be honest.”

Jamie leans back, gauging her reaction as she goes. “I know the feeling.”

Dani gives her a wry smile. “Yeah. Well, there was this family. Rich, English, wanted a live in nanny. The kids were lovely, I liked it there.”

Jamie nods, still cautious.

“The mother was ok. Never there. Had a lot of charity work you know. The father, he was some big business man. I think he was in politics but I’m not really sure.”

Jamie doesn’t have to ask now. She can hear the undercurrent in Dani’s voice, the sudden tension in her tone and she feels it resonate in her soul.

“He was… persistent. I made it pretty clear I wasn’t interested but he kept trying…” Dani takes a deep breath. “He caught me in the corridor one night. I think he was drunk. I mean, I got away, but I was pretty scared so I resigned the next day.”

She looks up at Jamie who is schooling her expression to the best of her abilities. The fury in her bones has surfaced but Dani doesn’t need that right now. She moves forward, finds her in the middle of the couch, takes her hand and holds it gently. “Asshole. Bet he’ll make great plant food.”

Dani laughs. “London’s a bit tainted now though.”

“Aww Poppins. London’s a big city. Don’t let one dickhead ruin it for you. Still, maybe we should go on this trip of Owen’s. I’ll even bring my shovel. We can make a day of it. British Museum in the morning and light murder for pre-dinner.”

Dani leans into her, head on Jamie’s shoulder and Jamie loops her arm around. “No need to go committing felonies for me. Anyway, Manchester sounds nice.”

“I’ll let Owen know. But if you change your mind, just know I can set up a good alibi.”

Dani chuckles. “Duly noted. Want to watch some television? I don’t think I can sleep yet.”

“Sure.”

Its so easy to lie back against the cushions and accept when Dani puts her head on Jamie’s shoulder again. It’s impossible not to loop her arm back around Dani’s shoulders and use the internal excuse that Dani needs the comfort. Not that Jamie doesn’t love this, the warmth against her side and the gentle breathing of another human against her own. No, not another human, Dani. It’s so easy to pretend, for a few moments, that this is her life and that she gets to do this. Its very tempting to press a kiss to the top of her head, but she fights that one off.

“You guys have weird tv.”

“You throwing shade at the beeb Poppins? Cos we’re very protective. Best telly in the world.”

“That man is chasing a woman in her underwear.”

“That man is Benny Hill. Know your legends.” Jamie laughs gently. “Actually I think he’s a bit shit but, everyone else in this damn country seems to love him.”

  
Dani looks up at her, from her comfortable perch on Jamie’s shoulder, and suddenly Jamie realises just how close she is. It’s impossible not, not to notice, especially when Dani’s eyes drop to her lips and Jamie’s heart speeds up to catastrophic levels.

She’s about to pull back, make some excuse, put some distance between them when Dani does the exact opposite.

Her lips are soft, so soft. They taste like lip gloss and something else that forevermore Jamie will think of as just Dani. The kiss is the barest whisper of a touch, like a ghost, but it’s the most real thing Jamie has ever felt and when she lets out a gasp, Dani moves in closer.

A touch of a tongue to her lips has her opening, tasting, tempting. Dani feels like heaven and her mouth moves so gently, so wonderfully against Jamie’s. Her cheek is warm, smooth under Jamie’s hand and it’s only when oxygen becomes an issue that they finally pull apart.

Jamie is hot, on fire, wired tight and vibrating with the tension of the moment.

“Dani,” she whispers. God she wants, how she wants. In her whole life, she’s never wanted anything as much as she wants Dani Clayton and yet, she knows exactly what she has to say. “We can’t.”

Dani moves back, searching her face. “Jamie.”

“I’m sorry,” she’s still whispering, and her hand is gripping Dani’s arm, begging her not to move away any further but her eyes are closed. If she opens them, she’ll have to see her face. See the relief or disappointment written there and honestly, it doesn’t matter which is there because they’ll both break Jamie equally.

“Jamie, look at me.”

She can’t deny her, not a plea like that. She’s willing to take the fracture if Dani asks her to, so she opens her eyes.

Dani’s face is warm, soft, and full of gentle concern. It’s almost worse than the anticipated other options.

She cups Dani’s face with both hands, wanting just once more to feel those amazing cheekbones under her thumbs, pretend that she might draw her back in, taste her again. “I’m sorry. We can’t.”

“Why not.”

Jamie shakes a little, still holding Dani’s face as the most precious thing she’s ever had in her hands. “We live together. We work together. Dani it could be a disaster.”

“It might not be,” Dani whispers back and Jamie can see that at least, in this, she’s not the only one who wants. It makes her insides clench, her whole resolve shaking like a tree in a hurricane.

Oh they could be something else. They could be everything Jamie pretended she didn’t want, lying in bed at night when her imagination wouldn’t be fought off and visions of blonde hair and blue eyes danced behind her eyes. They could be but Jamie knows they won’t.

She only realises that she’s crying when Dani reaches up to wipe a single tear from her cheek. “Jamie…”

“I’m not brave enough,” she chokes out. “I wish I was but I’m not. Dani, I can’t lose what we have. I wish I was brave enough to take the chance anyway, but if it all goes to shit I don’t know if I can … survive it.”

“What if it doesn’t go to shit?” Dani is smiling at her.

Jamie sniffs, pulling her hands free and wiping a sleeve across her eyes. “Experience is not in my favour here.”

Dani pulls back now, because the break is there, the separation has come and there’s no denying it.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie whispers. Because she is.

“Don’t be.”

“But I am. I don’t.. I didn’t…,” she looks at Dani intently, and there isn’t any malice or anger in her eyes. There’s maybe a hint of understanding but she’s still looking at Jamie like she’s someone worthy. Jamie isn’t worthy and she knows it. “It’s not you right, you have to know that.”

“Jamie…” Dani saying her name is a habit that Jamie doesn’t want to interrupt but it may be the end of her as it turns out.

“I just… I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She stands up, shaking her hands and moving away. She needs a cigarette and air. She needs to walk and thrust her hands into a pot of earth and anything to not turn around and break her own promise immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Dani says, still oh so gentle. “You’re not wrong. We do work together and live together.”

Jamie gives her a watery smile. It’s all she’s got right now. And she needs to go. “I’m gonna go down to the greenhouse for awhile. You’ll be ok?”

“I’m gonna head to bed. I’ll be fine.”

It’s just one kiss. Of course she’ll be fine. It was just one goddamn kiss and it hasn’t fractured Dani’s world like it has Jamie’s. But Jamie is good at running, good at fleeing, so that’s what she does. Down the stairs, into the backyard next door, in to her greenhouse where she stops, and it comes.

The tears, the shaking, the utter everything of it, all at once. Great big wrenching tears that she hasn’t had for years, pouring out of her like a torrent, until it finally stops as all storms do.

And Jamie is good at weathering the storms.

****************************

_It’s warm in Jamie’s bed, when it’s so cold outside. It’s warm and soft and full of Katie. She doesn’t know where Trent is and she doesn’t care, because right now, her whole world is right here in this bed. Wearing one of Jamie’s t-shirts and swimming in it, just a t-shirt and underwear, she’s tucked up against Jamie and together they’re in this little world together. If this behaviour wasn’t exactly friend like, she wasn’t about to bring that up._

_Katie’s fingers are tracing the features of her face, the arch of a cheekbone, the gentle curve of her jaw and the fine straight line of her nose. She’d do the same back but her arms are taken, curved around the tiny figure in front of her, and she doesn’t want to move._

“ _You do girls yeah?” Katie’s words are soft, and they’re so close that Jamie can feel them against her skin as well as hear them._

_Does she? Jamie has never really put much thought into it. God knows she has no time for men, but that made sense to her. Girls, with their soft lips and sweet smells and bodies that melt under her touch, had always made sense to her. Jamie had never bothered to put a label on it, because what was the bloody point._

“ _Yeah,” was the culmination of that thought that came out of her mouth however._

“ _Why?”_

_Jamie can’t really answer that but she tries. “Better than hairy, smelly blokes right?”_

_Katie giggles in her arms. “Yeah, I guess.” She pauses, fingers still moving across the skin of Jamie’s face. “But I mean, aren’t you like, missing something?”_

“ _Erm… I don’t think so?” Jamie knows what she’s referring to kind of, but also not really. Maybe? This conversation is not one she’d really ever had before or wanted to. “I mean, all the good stuff is there without the other stuff.”_

_Katie frowns at her. “Isn’t the other stuff the point?”_

_Jamie laughs. “Definitely not.”_

_Katie moves impossibly closer. Whisper thin air separates them now. Jamie’s eyes grow wide, as she feels Katie’s hand move down to her waist, squeezes at the bone of her hip, pulls her in until they’re as flush as can be._

_Lips brush hers, soft and sweet and Jamie cracks open in the middle. Soft skin under her fingers, with clothes melting away like fresh snow in the sun. Precious ruby lips and straining nipples under her mouth, her tongue, whispered whimpers in her ears. She worships, she gives and she gives and she gets what she’s been wanting forever. Wet heat under her fingers and the surprised noises of pleasure that intensify._

_The feeling of Katie, falling apart, clenching around her fingers as pleasure cascades through her, is imprinted on her._

_Soft, gentle panting in her arms as she lays there, pliant and open, all Jamie’s in that moment._

_Who is she to say no?_


	10. In which Owen has Wisdom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie is having some trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again for all the amazing love you leave me in the comments and in kudos. It keeps me writing, keeps me so happy, you have no idea. 
> 
> CN on this one: Physical violence, not heavily described.

It should be awkward. It should be catastrophically uncomfortable and barely negotiable but it’s not. It’s just normal, and that’s possibly more upsetting to Jamie than anything. Dani is completely normal to her from there on, and she manages to keep up her side of the bargain like inside she isn’t trembling like a baby giraffe just born.

She supposes that it’s exactly what she asked for, Dani’s friendship, companionship, without the complications. And it is what she wants. Well, it’s not what she wants but it’s what she’s got and what she needs. And it’s what she’s getting and it’s confusing.

The confusion and trembling does even out over the next few days, as their perfectly normal life continues to be boring and routine. Jamie has a quick chat to Owen about changing the destination of any vacation away, and they agree to head north rather than south, but then the conversation seems to fall by the wayside as another idea that sounds good but doesn’t ever get off the ground. Maybe they’ll go one day, maybe they won’t.

Jamie makes it through a whole week of thinking that things will be OK, pretending that she doesn’t want to grab Dani by the front of the shirt and kiss her senseless, before things get a bit rocky again. She’s walking the precarious line between wishing her life would go back to the bland, greyscale boredom of pre-Dani, when things didn’t go wrong because nothing ever happened, and the joy of just having her in Jamie’s life.

Moving through a small kitchen together in the morning, negotiating tea and coffee and toast while pretending that freshly showered Dani doesn’t smell amazing is almost impossible. Sitting on the couch and pretending that she doesn’t want to throw an arm around Dani and just pull her in, cuddle up, absorb her into her side and just be, is also almost impossible. Jamie is bloody good at ignoring the things she wants, but this one is getting to be a problem.

In the end, the thing that breaks is her. Dani does nothing to push her over the edge other than simply exist and do so charmingly. Jamie hasn’t wanted something as badly as she wants Dani for a very long time, and it’s too much. It’s too much on a Friday afternoon when Dani asks if she wants to go for a drink, and instead she lies and says she promised she’d help Owen build something and flees instead.

She does go to Owen, because there’s no one else she can flee to. He’s cleaning his kitchen when she appears at the door, taking one look at her face and putting down his cloth.

“Is this a whisky or a tequila situation?”

She doesn’t know what facial expression she’s wearing but apparently it’s the appropriate one for what she’s feeling. “Neither. I think I need to be sober but … maybe gin if … it goes downhill?”

“Come on, lets go out back.”

The back yard of Owen and Hannah’s cafe is reminiscent of what Jamie’s looked like before she transformed it with love and back breaking hard work – a small square of barren dirt with some beer bottles that some kind soul has tossed over the back fence. Jamie lights a cigarette and offers one to Owen who demurs. “Naah, trying to give up.”

“Sounds overly healthy.”

“Balancing out the fact that I’m two thirds butter. Also I can’t smoke at home because of Hannah, so it seems like a good idea just to go all in.”

Jamie smiles, because even if her own inability to hold down any kind of romantic attachment makes her cynical, Owen and Hannah would always be her exception. If they ever bloody got over themselves.

“So, you wanna tell me why you’re in my back yard looking like you’ve seen a ghost instead of at the pub with Dani and Hannah?”

Jamie inhales, letting the smoke swirl in her lungs until it burns and then finally exhaling before she chokes. “Wanted to hang out with you?”

“Try again.”

“Giving up booze.”

“And again.”

“Dani kissed me.”

There’s a long silence before Owen picks at a piece of grass growing up through the cracks of his stairs and tilts his head sideways. “Is that a bad thing?”

Jamie sighs, stubs out her already done cigarette and hugs her own knees to her chest. “We can’t. You know we can’t.”

“I know no such thing.”

“Owen we live together. We work together. You know what the last few months have been like for her.”

“I do, and I fail to see how you two finding each other is a bad thing.”

“Because when it all goes belly up, I don’t want it to fuck her over.”

Owen sighs, knocking Jamie’s knee with his own. “Few big assumptions there mate.”

“Nope.”

“First, you’re assuming it’ll go belly up.”

She gives him the look. That look. “My track record is so fantastic yeah. And Dani’s had a pretty shit run of it. Don’t these things always go to shit?”

“Literally every relationship before the one that sticks is the one that isn’t it. If what you’re looking for is the one, that person, then everyone you’ve ever dated before isn’t that person by definition. You don’t know that this isn’t going to be the one.”

Jamie snorts. “The one. Bloody romantic nonsense that.”

“OK, but then you have to look at each person as a great life experience that you may or may not move on from. Either way, my argument stands. Enjoy the ride or get off the train.”

She glares at him because he’s being logical and it’s annoying. He takes her silence as accession and continues.

“Second point, if it does end for whatever reason, you’re presupposing you can’t be adults about it.”

“Never works that way. Ever. Extra points for the big words though.”

“I’m still in contact with both my exes.”

“You’re not human.”

He laughs. “Thanks.”

“You’re a rolling pin in human form. It’s why you love Gertrude so much.”

“I love Gertrude because she never melts my pastry. I love you because you’re very much human and I think, capable of many more things that you think you are.”

She can’t respond to this one either, so she doesn’t.

“Thirdly, you say you’re worried about Dani, but honestly, she’s a big girl. I think you’re worried about you.”

She gives him a dirty look. “Yeah, maybe I am, so what?”

He takes her hand, squeezes it gently, and then pats it. “That sounds pretty human to me.”

“I never said I wasn’t human, I said you weren’t.” She knows she’s being petulant now but feels the conversation merits it regardless. “You can’t tell me it’s a good idea to start shagging your housemate and employee.”

“No, I agree with that. I think that starting a caring relationship with a good friend who happens to work with you is a different beast though. And you know it. And I think we both know that what you feel is more than friendly.”

Jamie sighs, pulling her legs in tighter. “Owen. I can’t.”

“OK, well that’s up to you, but maybe you might want to actually explore why it is you think you can’t. Because I have some ideas and none of them are the things you’ve said.”

“I don’t think I want to hear them.” She really doesn’t.

“Jamie…” He’s gentle, because he’s Owen, but she can feel the meaning behind her name, knows that he’s pushing her. If she wants to, she can get up and walk away right now and he’ll never think twice about it, but she doesn’t.

“I’m already going to hate it when she leaves,” she whispers. “Like I’d hate it if you left, or Hannah.”

He leans back on his hands. “Lucky for you, I’m not going anywhere, but I understand. I’d be bloody sad if you left too, but I’d assume it was because you were off to see the world instead of drying up in this bloody gravity well of a town.”

“Not likely anytime soon.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think Dani is leaving any time soon either.”

“Why would she stay here?”

“A million reasons but maybe the more pertinent question is: Why wouldn’t she?”

She glares at him again. Owen has a way of tying her in knots when her mind is this jumbled. She can hold her own, but when he starts using that gentle tone tied with irrefutable logic, it’s almost impossible to wade through.

“Things have to start somewhere.”

She closes her eyes. It’s very tempting to let his words in, and let herself believe them. They’re everything she wants to have and wants to believe.

“Things can end too.” Jamie toes the ground. She can’t remember the last time something ended _well_.

“Everything ends. Everything starts and goes and then ends, that’s how the world works. Think about your plants. When they die, you don’t lament them. If they’re vegetables you eat them and enjoy them and then turn the ends into worm food. You say it yourself, it’s all a cycle.”

“Don’t turn my own words back on me,” she frowns at him.

“What was it you once said to me: That’s why it’s beautiful? Because it’s not forever.”

“Something like that,” she mumbles. Those weren’t her exact words but close enough. “There’s a difference between not forever and a massive looming disaster you could avoid.”

Owen laughs. “You know, for someone who usually spends their days being pretty calm and collected, you sure can build a mountain out of a mole hill when you want to. How do you go from one small kiss to massive looming disaster?”

“All I’m saying is, you usually wouldn’t suggest someone shit their own bed.”

“Too right I wouldn’t. I’m suggesting not shitting at all.”

“Constipation. Right. Excellent strategy.”

He shoulders her gently. “Maybe you should just take it slowly. Day by day, but don’t deny yourself things that could be really good for you. Or good for her. You’re good together, I see it. You care for each other deeply already. How long has she been here?”

“About four months.”

Three months, twenty nine days and a few hours. Not like Jamie has kept track of it or anything.

“And Christmas just around the corner.”

“I’m up to my ears in Poinsettias and wreaths.”

“What are you getting her?”

Jamie sighs. “I think I’ll get her a new coat. She needs one, hers is falling apart and it’s getting cold.”

Owen smiles. “See, look at you, caring about her.”

“Of course I bloody care about her. That wasn’t in question. It’s about not upsetting the balance and watching it all fall apart isn’t it.”

“I think,” Owen says carefully, “it’s probably about protecting your heart. Because you know that if you give it, you give it all and you’re scared.”

She lets that one hang for a minute before she can’t any longer.

“Fuck you. You’re not supposed to just say these things.” She buries her face in her hands.

“Sure I am, that’s why you keep me around. Baking, puns and the big truths.”

She sighs. “I need a drink.”

“Gin?”

“Whisky.”

“C’mon inside.” He stands up and holds out his hand. “Jamie.”

“Yeah.”

“You deserve happiness.”

She wants to argue with him because fundamentally she’s not sure she does. The problem is, for the first time in forever, she’s also not sure she cares. She wants happiness, so badly she can taste it. She wants Dani. The world has given her a lot of things she didn’t deserve and withheld more than a few she probably did. Maybe it was just time she took what she wanted and fuck deserving or whatever.

“Just get me a whisky.”

**********************************************

_Jamie doesn’t like what she’s hearing, but has no choice to listen anyway. It’s a job opportunity of unparalleled nature for her. It’s also fucking dangerous. Trent has offered her more money than she’s ever had in her life to move one bit of product across London. Simple._

_Except Jamie doesn’t like it. Trent has a million runners and people scurrying around for him. Up until now they’ve regarded each other with mutual, if not respect, then wariness. He knows she doesn’t use. He knows she doesn’t work the streets, and he knows that she’ll keep her mouth shut and her tongue silent._

_People like Jamie are useful, that’s how she’s gotten so far_ _out here, on her own_ _._

_Still._

_She can see Katie looking at her from under Trent’s arm and her expression isn’t subtle. This hasn’t been Trent’s fucking idea._

“ _What’s the catch?”_

_He grins at her, front tooth missing and yellow teeth like tombstones. “It’s a big load.”_

“ _Yeah. So split it up, send it in lots.”_

“ _One drop off, one time, to a dangerous customer.”_

“ _You have people.”_

“ _The police know my people. The other side know my people. They don’t know you. You’ll be able to get it there and get back, without them knowing it’s you. Can’t ambush someone to the drop off if they don’t know the person dropping it off.”_

_She snorts. “Can ambush me_ _AT_ _the fucking drop off though.”_

“ _Public place. Middle of the day. Not likely. The Ruskis don’t want trouble.”_

_She stares at him, intently. He’s not a good liar, even though he thinks he is. Jamie is a very good liar. “One time deal then?”_

“ _Well if it works…”_

_She shakes her head. “One time deal. Cash in hand, half before I get the stuff, half when I get back. If I walk with your goods, you can find me and skin me alive, I know the way it goes.”_

_His grin now is a little more than half. “You wouldn’t walk.”_

_She looks at Katie. No, she wouldn’t walk._

“ _Fine. One time deal.”_

_He nods._

_Its dangerous and it’s dumb and it’s everything she’s told herself she’ll never get into. Making smart decisions has kept her alive, gotten her to seventeen relatively unscathed as street life goes. A few new scars and a few close calls, sure, but she has her brain and has her body and she’d like to keep both afloat for awhile longer. She’d like to be off the streets for awhile longer too._

_The money is too good to say no. It’s too much cash to just throw on the pile of missed opportunities, not when there’s the same dream creeping in to her head every day. Not when she lies in bed, with Katie tucked up against her, cuddled in, breathless and sleepy after orgasm. Not when Katie traces a finger across her lips and looks at her with such love, such tenderness, that Jamie knows she isn’t dreaming that bit._

_It’s a fucking dumb idea, but she wants it anyway. She wants to run. Not far, just far enough to find a little flat, throw down a security deposit. She’ll get a job, maybe in a shop or something. They can make crap food in the tiny kitchen, and make love on the floor mattress but it’ll be theirs, not someone elses. They could leave here, and be together._

_All Jamie has to do is make it work._

_Katie isn’t like the other girls. She’s whispered things in the night about her stepfather and the home she fled. Katie is more like her than even Katie knows. Katie needs out too, and Jamie can make it happen for them. She’s been saving, stashing money in places no one will ever find. This could be enough, this haul. Together, they could just go._

_Still, it’s a fucking dumb idea._

“ _You’ll really do it?” Katie is breathless and excited, bouncing into Jamie’s room without knocking. She never knocks, not any more. She doesn’t need Jamie to be home even. Countless times she’s come home to find Katie in her bed, asleep, waiting for her, bored, watching the tiny tv she keeps in the corner. Times she’s come home to a knowing look and minutes later she’s on her knees, with Katie’s legs spread, going to town like it’s her fucking dinner. She could pretend Katie doesn’t have her wrapped around her pinky finger but Jamie doesn’t like being lied to, even by herself._

“ _You asked him.” It’s not a question, Jamie already knows._

“ _Yeah, I mean, it was my idea.”_

“ _You know this is dangerous right.”_

_Katie rolls her eyes. “Everything Trent does is dangerous. Don’t pretend that you aren’t doing shit too. You don’t get money from nothing.”_

“ _Moving drugs is bad. It gets you killed. Little bits yeah, but the Russians? That’s big game.”_

_She sits on Jamie’s bed, and the seductive look she throws at Jamie is ridiculous. It also doesn’t work. Jamie’s not that whipped._

“ _One time job you said.”_

“ _Yeah.”_

“ _You said yes. You could have said no.”_

_Jamie sits down next to her. “It’s a lot of money. We could get out of here with that kind of money.”_

_If Katie hears the we, she doesn’t acknowledge it._

“ _It’s a huge deal for Trent. He wouldn’t give it to you if he didn’t trust you. He’s not going to shaft you on this one, he needs it to go off without a hitch.”_

_Jamie doesn’t like how much Katie knows about Trent’s business. Her unease is growing by the second but she’s said yes now._

“ _Why did you suggest me?”_

_She has to know. She has to._

“ _Because silly, if you work for Trent no one will question why we spend so much time together.”_

_Jamie turns that one over in her head. “Have they been questioning now.”_

“ _Yeah. Maybe. A little. I mean you are a dyke.”_

_The words fall into her hears like ash. Like Herculaneum is doomed and she just needs to wait to be encased. If she’s a dyke what does that make Katie. She doesn’t ask._

“ _Need to be more careful then.” She’s not talking to Katie and she knows it, but Katie doesn’t._

“ _Do this for Trent and no one will question. Especially not him.”_

_Jamie looks at her then, sharply. “Is he?”_

“ _No, god no, do you know what he’d do?”_

_Jamie knows. She knows and that’s why this is all so fucking dangerous. She just needs to get the money and then they can get away. They’ll leave London. Plenty of other towns, Bristol, Manchester, lots of places they can go. All she needs to do is get the money._

“ _I’ll do it this once, but not more dropping my name yeah? I don’t want to be one of his mates.” She gives Katie a pointed look. “This one time.”_

_The smile Katie gives her is positively beatific, before she’s grabbing Jamie by the shirt front and hauling her in._

“ _Trent’s smoking up. He’ll be out for hours. Come keep me company.”_

_Who is Jamie to say no?_

_***********************_

_When the plan goes off without a hitch, she’s frankly surprised. There’s something about carrying a duffle bag full of Colombian best across town on the fucking Underground that seems surreal. Jamie is excellent at being calm in a crisis, but even this is testing her best limits._

_In Trafalgar square she spots her man without trouble. He’s in a fucking tracksuit and gold chains. Subtle he is not. He gives her the signal and then the phrase word. Bags are exchanged. She checks hers, it’s good. He checks his, gives her a nod. To the nearest onlookers, nothing so much as an exchange would have happened._

_Jamie half expects the police to swoop in at any moment, but she’s back on the Underground heading home before the clock has even ticked noon. She keeps an eye out, carefully, changes trains in the lunch rush hour crowds and if she’s followed, they don’t get her._

_She’s good, Jamie is._

_Walking back into the house has never felt like such a relief. It’s fairly empty, even for the middle of the day, but Trent is there with Geoff and a few of his other crony’s. Katie, as ever, tucked under his arm giving her a weak smile._

_As soon as she puts the bag down she knows that she’s made a mistake._

_This feels wrong. This all feels wrong._

_She should have just taken this bag and run, but she liked her skin attached to her body. Better to do the job and get paid than run for the rest of your life. Or maybe not in this case._

“ _Job done. You can check it.” She kicks the bag over to him, but it’s too heavy and only goes a few inches._

_Some bloke with no neck picks it up, takes it over and Trent checks, that tombstone smile making her feel sick. “Nicely done.”_

“ _I’ll take my pay now.” She keeps her tone even, but firm._

_This feels wrong._

“ _Come on, sit down, have a drink.”_

_She doesn’t like his smile. Worse still, she doesn’t like the look on Katie’s face, or the fact that now she looks closely, there’s a red mark badly hidden under the makeup._

_This is very, very wrong._

“ _I’m good. Just need my pay.”_

“ _Sit.”_

_A chair is brought, but not to the table. It’s plonked behind her and no neck pushes her into it._

_Fuck._

“ _So, some of the boys, they’ve been asking me questions.”_

“ _They can talk can they?” Whether now is the time to be a smart ass or not seems irrelevant._

“ _Questions like: Do you know who’s been fucking your woman?”_

“ _Presumably you.”_

“ _I like you Jamie. You had real potential. If only you knew how to keep your hands off other people’s things.”_

“ _Delivered your package just like you asked mate.”_

_There’s no getting out of this now, she knows. Nothing is going to save her because they’re circling like sharks._

“ _And I’m a man of my word. You’ll get your money. After you get whats coming to you. Katie here says you’ve been making her do things. Forcing her like.”_

_Briefly Jamie’s mind flexes to Katie’s hands in her hair this morning, pushing her down as Jamie’s tongue makes circles and figure eights, tiny whimpering noises of please and more and god and Jamie’s name._

_She doesn’t reply but she does look straight at Katie. Katie who is cuddled in to Trent. Katie’s eyes that scream sorry but Katie who has resolutely chosen a side. Katie who might love her the way Jamie loves Katie, but not enough. Never enough._

_When the first blow lands, she doesn’t see it coming, because it’s from out of her visual field, but it doesn’t matter. She knew it was coming, and she was waiting anyway._

_By the fifth blow, she stops feeling them at all._

_She really should have said no._


	11. In Which Jamie Feels the Joy of Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie can't help it, not one bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating. I haven't had any time to myself. Phew. 
> 
> Ok. 
> 
> Here we go. 
> 
> CN for violence and crime, but not like, really, just a bit. 
> 
> Once again edited by a monkey named Horace who only works if I feed him cheeseburgers and I was a bit short on cheeseburgers so it's possible there's mistakes.

Chapter 11

_It takes her days until she stops vomiting blood. It takes her days to crawl her way out of the hole she’s managed to find in the corner, grateful for the bottle of water she’s managed to scrounge off some homeless men who look at her like they’ve seen death a few too many times._

_It takes her days until she can walk, take stock of how many broken bones she has, definitely a few ribs, probably her left wrist if she thinks about it, doesn’t want to think about her face._

_It takes her days but she crawls, and limps and pulls herself back to the light, streaked with pain and the self hatred of a bad decision made worse._

_  
Fucking muppet that she is._

_It takes her days to drag herself back and out and right back to where she shouldn’t be. Homeless, penniless and nothing but the torn clothes on her back, less than the day a fresh faced fifteen year old arrived in London and called it freedom, she crawls back. Right back until she can hide the the dark recesses near where she knows she’ll be. She scrounges food and water, braves the cold, thanks her lucky stars it’s not winter._

_She waits and she waits in the shadows for a moment when finally, just finally she’s alone, and Jamie emerges._

_Comes out like a cone shell, poison and venom spitting._

“ _Why?”_

_Katie whips around, startled, taking in the very sight of Jamie with a slight cry and then a hand on her mouth. “Shit. SHIT. You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here.”_

_Jamie shoves her hands in her pockets. “Not going to be here long. Just needed to ask.”_

“ _Are you fucking crazy? He let you live. If he catches you now…”_

“ _Fuck him. I want you to tell me.”_

_It’s stupid being here, so goddamn stupid._

“ _Jamie… You need to go.”_

_Jamie spits, blood tinged and swaying. She’s down a tooth, in the back of her mouth, and she tongues the hole, relishing in the pain. Not that she needs to look for it right now, everything is a riot of pain._

“ _Did I mean nothing to you?”_

“ _Of course you did!” Katie hisses. “But we were… . I want to live. I want a house. I want to get out of here. I… you need to leave. Jamie just leave. Before someone sees you.”_

“ _Why?”_

_Katie looks at her, understanding the real question. “He’s my man yeah.”_

“ _And what was I?”_

_There is no answer, and she never really expected one. She’d lost her head, made some truly disastrous decisions, and now she would know the toll. Roughly the transcript of her life as it had passed actually. She watches Katie go, walking backwards and out of Jamie’s view as Jamie melts back in to the shadows when noises come, people walk past._

_That’s how it ends. Just like that. Fading to black._

_**********************************_

Jamie is the first to admit that her feelings about Christmas are complicated. On the one hand, she hates selling people endless reams of Christmas cheer. That isn’t uniquely set to Christmas. She dislikes all of the peak holidays and the nonsense she’s expected to churn out if she wants to keep sales up. She really just wants people to come in, buy her plants and flowers and bugger off, without needing national holidays to decorate. It’s not like there are too many Christmases in her past that have held great cheer and wonder for her either. The last four or five haven’t been too bad, but prior to that, Christmas was either a disaster or definitely just another day.

On the other hand, she can’t help buy into the whole shenanigans. It’s hard to deny that there’s something magical about the hope and giving of Christmas, with it’s bloody cheer and mulled wine and people singing relentlessly at you. It’s even harder to ignore it when the bloody American in your shop insists on wearing a fucking adorable Santa hat and greeting everyone with holiday appropriate cheer. Despite her propensity to scrooge to the max, Jamie has allowed a Christmas tree to invade their flat, has eaten quite delicious Christmas cookies with appreciation, and has, for one week, allowed Christmas music in the shop.

“You’re supposed to play it in December! That’s when it’s for!”

“Look, usually I don’t play it at all so can we compromise on one week and then I won’t go all The Shining on us.”

They’d compromised, with a victorious grin from Dani.

Dani, with whom she was drawn ever closer every day. Dani, for whom she had three gifts tucked away in her closet, waiting for Christmas Day. Dani who had celebrated Christmas every year of her life, and Jamie suspected with the wide eyed joy of a child each time. She didn’t deserve for it to be grinched out of existence just because Jamie wasn’t in the mood.

She does draw the line at the reindeer antlers though. She’s not wearing them. Not now, not ever.

Christmas Eve is a flurry of activity for the shop, inexplicably because most of the decorations had been sold in November. It’s astounding how many people want fresh flowers on the table at Christmas though, because when they come to closing time, Jamie thinks she’s never seen her shop so depleted of stock.

Nor her coffers so full.

Now they have a four day break of shop closure and Jamie has never been so ready for it in her life. The idea of eggnog, and good food, and annoying Owen and Hannah and just spending time with Dani has her genuinely looking forward to Christmas for the first time in forever.

She refuses to fight it. For once, she gives in, and just enjoys the time around her. She enjoys Dani dancing around the flat to the stupid English Christmas songs she’s never really heard before, and Jamie sees new life in them. She enjoys the bright look on Dani’s face when it snows, even just for the barest minute.

She just enjoys.

Christmas Eve sees them tucked into Owen and Hannah’s flat, drinking coffees that Owen has Irished up, and staring at the twinkling lights of their tree. There’s only so much room, so Dani and Hannah have the couch and Jamie finds herself tucked in at Dani’s feet, her leg warm against Jamie’s back. She wants to tilt her head back, feel Dani’s fingers run through her hair, close her eyes, absorb the warmth.

She doesn’t. But she still enjoys.

“What time do you want us around for lunch tomorrow?” Dani asks. Jamie feels dreamy and sleepy, after the day they’ve had and the alcohol pleasantly humming through her veins.

“Come over whenever, we’ll be up early.”

“What Owen means is that he’ll be up early cooking and I’ll be lying in bed because I don’t have a cafe to run,” Hannah sips her tea, which is decidedly un Irish and pure bedtime.

“Do you want us to come help?”

Jamie groans at Dani’s question. “Noooo, we should sleep in.”

She likes the little chuckle she can feel reverberate through their joined places. Likes the fingers that brush on her shoulder. She should either have more or less whisky but right now she isn’t sure which.

“OK, can I come over and help then? Leave these two layabouts to… uh.. lay about.”

“All in hand! Prep’s all done, just need to throw the bird in the oven and some potatoes.”

Jamie groans in ready anticipation this time. “Oh my god, your goose fat potatoes. I swear I’m going to eat my weight in them.”

“I have prepared extra just in case.”

Jamie leans back and her head falls on to Dani’s knee. She’s about to move it, aware of the sudden feel of it, when fingers gently scratch her scalp. It’s the good kind of scratch, that causes ripples of goosebumps and a slight shiver, so it’s oh so hard to pull away.

Dani pulls away first.

Jamie wonders, for a second, if she’s playing some kind of game, but there’s nothing artful about Dani Clayton. It’s not that Dani doesn’t have it in her to be bold, or forward, or even downright cheeky, she just doesn’t have a sly bone in her body.

She wants to stay, wants to close her eyes again and let it all go loose. She wants to stay.

“I think I need to go home. Long bloody week and I’m tired.” She stands up, stretching. “You coming?”

Owen and Hannah may just live down the street but it’s still a walk in the dark and she doesn’t like the idea of Dani doing it alone.

“Yeah. I’m pretty beat.”

“Don’t sleep too late. Food and presents!” It is delightful how childlike Owen sounds.

It’s cold out, a bare sky keeping the chill at maximum, and Jamie shivers down into her coat. “Bloody hell.”

“I like it,” Dani is grinning. “Christmas should be cold. Should snow.”

“You know White Christmas’ are really rare right.”

“I know, I know, but I still love them. The whole idea of them.”

Jamie laughs. “I can see you as a kid, nose pressed up against the window praying for a downfall.”

“Every year,” Dani admits. “I think I thought that if it snowed then Christmas would be real and maybe my dad would be there. Maybe my mum would be sober. Maybe it would be Christmas like it was supposed to be.”

She sounds more thoughtful than sad, but Jamie’s heart cracks a little anyway, and she can’t help but grab her hand as they walk. “Hey. We’ll have a nice Christmas yeah?”

Dani smiles at her, swinging their now linked hands that Jamie is desperately trying not to focus on. “Yeah. We will.”

It’s impossible not to watch Dani in the streetlight, the frozen air around her sparkling in the reflection of a thousand Christmas lights. She is, Jamie thinks, angelic. Not the heavenly on high, perfection in a white nightgown and far too many feathers, no. Dani is the real kind of angel. The sort of person that’s truly good, down to the barest sub-atomic particle of their being. She vibrates with a gentle energy that spreads to all those around her, and Jamie is drawn, like any base level human would be. Dani is funny, and sweet, and sassy and smart and not afraid. Jamie is most drawn to that, like watching a creature from another world, wondering what it might be like not to be afraid every split second of your time.

She has wondered, in her idle time of far too much thinking whilst staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, if perhaps it’s the fascination that draws her. She has also laughed at herself at the very notion. Dani is not some kind of museum exhibit, or passing notion to be studied. Dani is Dani. She doesn’t need to be taken apart to find what in her ticks makes Jamie tock. She just is.

And so it’s impossible for Jamie not to watch her, smiling up at the sky on Christmas eve, and feel her heart clench tight in her chest. It’s impossible not to spend a fleeting moment concentrating on the warmth and shelter of the fingers that grip her own, even through gloves, a connection unending.

It’s impossible for Jamie not to admit, in the very centre of her being, that she’s afraid she’s falling in love.

******************

_Many avenues are closed to her now. The people she knows are wary of helping her, wary of coming close. Trent is powerful and has long reach, people don’t want to piss him off. Even Jamie knows she’s only alive because killing someone who has just done a job for you would have sent ripples._

_Jamie is hungry. Jamie is cold. Jamie is desperate._

_There’s a hole in a wall she curls up in for awhile, but too many bumps in the night, too many times of pressing a blade to someones skin to make them back off, leaves her raw and exhausted. She needs money and she needs somewhere to doss for a night. She needs a shower and food and rest._

_She finds houses, dark and empty, late, late in the evening. Its the fifth one tonight. Too many she knows. Someone will see, but she barely has twenty pounds from the last few. She needs enough for a few nights. There’s an open window. Lithe, thin, too thin, she slips in. She opens the fridge, finds the milk and chugs some down, putting the bottle back._

_Upstairs, she creeps, looking for anything quick sell and cash, anything she can put in her pockets. In and out fast, that’s the key. She likes passports, they make huge money, but can’t bring herself to take jewelry. Not only is it traceable but somewhere she has a vision of the loss of an heirloom, a precious piece of the heart, and she can’t do it._

_She’s upstairs, opening doors gently, when its suddenly too late._

_Too late, she hears them grunting. Too late she realises that she’s standing at the open bedroom door and they're fucking shagging and not at the pub at all. Too late as she trips down the stairs and he’s faster than she is, as she careens into walls and heads for the front door. It’s bolted. She’s not fast enough and her arm is grabbed._

_The first blow to her face knocks her to the ground and the subsequent kicks take all the breath out of her until she’s whimpering and her vision is red, stars and pain. It stops, when she hears voices at the edge of her consciousness. He might kill her._

_Relief is the coppers hauling her up and slapping the handcuffs on. Relief is the cool slab of a police cell and a scratchy blanket. Relief is the cup of weak tea and two slices of underdone toast that she eats fast and nearly chokes on. Relief is lying there, bruised, battered but alive, and understanding that freedom was always a lie. Freedom was the lie she told herself._

_Relief is the knowledge that everything is done now. So Jamie rests._


	12. In Which A New Year Brings Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Midnight and things need to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, thought since I'd left it a bit at the last update I'd do this one sooner. Had one in my pocket anyway. 
> 
> A huge shout out to Dark_Moonflower and InYourBrain for de-Australianising my vocab. Apparently "Grog shop" is very Australian. Who knew. 
> 
> CN for uhh.. Prison? Mention of Drugs. Jamie being happy. You know how it goes.
> 
> I think Horace the Editing Chimpanzee has gone on strike. I'm out of cheeseburgers, so, uh, enjoy the errors.

“What time are they expecting us tonight?” Dani is putting on her coat, new and warm, a Christmas present from Jamie. She had opened it with wide eyes and a shimmer of tears, an exuberant hug on the heels of her exclamation of joy. Jamie doesn’t think anyone has ever appreciated a present from her so much and it stabs deep to the core of her. Matches the scarf and gloves that Jamie added in, which just makes Jamie even warmer.

“Round eight I think.” Jamie sighs and turns the sign on the shop to closed. They haven’t had any customers for hours, because plants are not a traditional New Years purchase.

“I grabbed wine the other day. Tom said it was decent.”

Jamie grins at her. “On a first name basis with the man at the off licence are we now? My my.”

Dani makes a face. “He’s nice. Besides, I’m getting to know everyone now.”

“Not many of us to know I suppose. Bustling metropolis it is not.”

“I love it here,” Dani is utterly sincere.

“Seeing in the New Year with the same three people you see every day?”

“Is the best New Years plans I can think of,” Dani counters. “Why, you leaving us to go party somewhere bigger?”

  
“Yeah, Mrs Patel and I have some lit Euchre plans for this evening.”

“Gosh, wouldn’t want to disrupt that.”

Jamie shoulders her, as they lock up for the evening. “Fish and chips for dinner?”

“Lets just eat the leftovers. They’ll go off otherwise.”

“You’re doing terrible things for my cholesterol,” Jamie chides.

“What? They’re healthy!”

“Exactly. My cholesterol hasn’t been this low in years.”

Dani rolls her eyes at her. “Mmm, sorry for improving your general health. That jar of mustard you had in the fridge must have been sustaining you for years because it was the only thing there.”

“My mustard and I were very happy thank you.”

“Need me to move out so you can be alone?” Dani’s tone is lightly teasing but it brushes at the edge of Jamie, licking at her with a truth she can’t deny, doesn’t even want to deny any more.

“Naah. I kinda like you being there now. You can share my mustard.”

There. There it was. Jamie just saying things out loud that she would never say to someone. Jamie, offering to share mustard. Somewhere inside, she thinks it might be as close to a marriage proposal as she’s ever likely to make to someone.

Dani seems to take it in her stride.

Jamie catches her looking sometimes, Dani’s eyes searching and careful as they look. She responds with a smile, never asks, but she catches Dani looking. She would never ask her to stop, doesn’t want her to stop, but it’s working away at her edges. They’re so good together.

And it’s not like Jamie can stop herself from staring. Not like Jamie doesn’t find her eyes occasionally darting to Dani’s lips, remembering how soft they were, remembering the sweetness of her taste. It’s not like she doesn’t see Dani redoing her pony tail from across the shop, and see the long arch of her neck. She wonders, dangerously, what sounds Dani would make if she bit tiny little nips from jaw to collarbone.

She wonders what it would be like to watch a whole movie with Dani half on her lap, legs across hers, tucked into her side just breathing her in.

Wonders what it would be like to kiss her for hours, teasing, hands moving but not advancing. Always on the edge of more but never going there. Would it work Dani up like it would Jamie? Would she want more? Would she be trembling for Jamie’s touch like Jamie was just thinking about it?

She wonders and she suppresses and it rises again like memory foam, pressed always into the shape of Dani.

They celebrate New Years at Owen and Hannah’s, because where else would they go. Their flat is considerably more comfortable and larger than Dani and Jamie’s. Plus Owen cooks, and it’s so damn good. By the time the clock edges close to midnight, Jamie is comfortably warm on a few glasses of wine and Dani is next to her on the couch, goddamn glowing in the lamp light and more beautiful than anything Jamie has ever seen.

They move to balcony, for whatever celebration the tiny town of Bly seems fit to offer. It’s apparently just every one in town who’s awake yelling a countdown out the windows, off balconies, from the streets and spilling out of the pub down the road. It’s a cat yowling and someone throwing a shoe.

It’s hitting zero and someone blowing some kind of kazoo and cheering and Owen pulling Hannah in for a hug.

It’s Jamie, holding Dani and looking at her as they too come together to greet the New Year together. It’s Jamie, staring at the most wonderful thing that life has ever given her, warm and special, and hugging her.

It’s Jamie dipping her head, brushing her lips across Dani’s until there’s a gasp and a willing meeting, melding. Time stands still, here on the precipice of a new year, Jamie dipping her tongue in, meeting Dani, folding in to her. She cups the back of her head, holding her soft and gentle as they move in concert, gently touching, testing, tasting. Dani is like cool spring water on a hot day, pouring in to her. She wants to hold her forever like this, in this moment.

A gentle cough pulls her away and she looks up, stunned, with Owen’s grinning if somewhat red face not metre away on the balcony, and Hannah politely looking away but grinning.

Dani is now tucked in to her shoulder, blushing like a tomato.

Oops.

If nothing gets said when they head inside from the cool balcony and the now escalating raucous behaviour on the street, it’s probably only to protect Dani. The look on Owen’s face, a combination of smug, delighted and completely ready for a truly epic bit of ribbing, is only held at bay by the fact that Dani is holding fast to her hand, glued to her side and looks vaguely dazed.

“Want to head home?” She whispers down to Dani.

They’ll have to talk, she knows that. Probably before more kissing, though the look in Dani’s eyes suggests that if Jamie wants to forgo the talking, it will be fine. She does, because kissing is so much more attractive an option than talking, but she won’t.

Somehow, somewhere, she’s made a decision. She’s taken the delightful step off the precipice and if she’s going to do this, she’s going to do it _right_. Then kisses.

Dani nods, and they take their leave. There’s hugs, and of course, Owen whispering in her ear that he’s so very happy for them and also to behave. She gives him a truly Jamie look. Hannah just hugs her knowingly.

Their hands find each other again, as they walk the very short distance home. It doesn’t matter that there are citizens of Bly now stumbling home from last call. It doesn’t matter that she knows them, that they know her and they can see the linked hands. It’s all tipping hats and Happy New Years and Jamie, keeping her grip safe and steady and happy because once again Dani is gorgeous in the cold night air, and she doesn’t want to let go.

She has to, to unlock the door to their flat, and to let Dani in. She has to stay unlinked as they doff their coats and scarves and gloves, hanging them on the little coat rack attached to the wall. The one that Jamie carefully mounted for Dani because the backs of chairs are not for coats apparently.

It’s only when she’s facing Dani in the living room, that she grabs her hand again, both of them this time, and takes them in her own.

“Happy New Year,” she murmurs for the first time. She’d missed it, having decided to use her lips for an entirely different purpose at the time.

“Happy New Year.”

“Uh… so um.” Smooth Jamie. Really smooth.

Dani chuckles and pulls her in, wrapping her arms around Jamie’s waist and leaning on her shoulder. “Take your time.”

How does she know? How does she know that Jamie has these things she needs to process and then gently ease out? Jamie has never felt seen before, not the way that Dani sees her. Hell, Dani sees things in her Jamie doesn’t believe exist.

“So that happened.”

“It did.”

“Sorry it was uh.. in public.”

“I didn’t mind,” Dani looks at her, and then almost as an afterthought kisses her cheek. Jamie feels the brush of lips on her skin, and the tingles, and has to sigh a little, wanting to turn her head and sink back in to Dani instead of forcing her thoughts out of her mouth.

“Can I kiss you again?” She whispers it, her breath gently caressing Dani in a bare mimic of a kiss, the one she wants to badly. She expects Dani to nod, to kiss her, to do anything but pull back slightly and instead look Jamie square in the eye.

“Are you sure?”

Valid question.

Jamie nods.

Dani takes a step back, and Jamie’s panic instincts go into full on ramped up electric mains mode, until Dani grabs her hand and pulls her to the couch, sits them down, and doesn’t let go. “What changed?”

“I… I really like you. _”_ Probably more than like but Jamie isn’t going there. “I’ve never really felt like this about someone, not someone I could trust, someone… like you.”

Dani nods and tucks a curl of errant hair behind Jamie’s ear. “You know I would never hurt you right?”

Jamie gives her a wry smile. “You will. Humans do that. They bruise each other even when they don’t mean to. Kind of why I like plants so much.”

“The roses attack me regularly.”

“Skin deep though.” Jamie traces her thumb across Dani’s hand. “But, somethings have to be worth the effort right. Some people? Rare but they are.”

“The right people.” Dani gives her the softest smile, one that says with all of her heart that Jamie is one of them. Jamie lifts her hand to Dani’s cheek, thumbing across an arching cheekbone.

“I want… so much… with you.” She can feel the warmth on her skin, like they’re in front of an open fire, like the world is swirling heat and embers around them but not burning. “I don’t want to fight this.”

“Then don’t,” Dani whispers, and kisses her.

***********************************

“ _Next.”_

_Jamie shuffles forward. The clothes they have her in are the rough equivalent of sweat pants and a jumper. They’re surprisingly comfortable although she’s still galled at having to give up her own underwear. A blanket, sheets and a pillow have been pressed in to her arms and now she stares up at some woman in a uniform with a clipboard._

“ _Name?”_

“ _Jamie Taylor.”_

“ _Get on.”_

_She shuffles forward again, to a group of six other women who are waiting, lining the corridor. It’s bright in here, the linoleum looks warn but clean, the walls scuffed. Court had been an experience, not forty eight hours after the police had found her, found her stash in the bag outside. Enough stolen goods to mark her down and put her out. The passports will probably do her in._

_Breaking and entering, Burglary. The charges read out by some droll man in a suit. Jamie had but a mere ‘No’ when asked if she had counsel and that had been all she’d said. One would be appointed to her apparently. Remand, until trial. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t like she didn’t know what the outcome of the trial would be already._

_Great. So here she was. In grey sweats and a scratchy blanket in her arms, still bruised to the bone and now almost glowing yellow with them under the lights. She refuses to look at the other women in the line, wanting to catch no eyes and make no moves. She can feel their gazes though, staring at her skin, the dried blood and split lip._

_They’re moved down the corridor, and if anyone makes to talk they’re shushed. The area they’re shuffled into, in the prison, is specifically for people on remand, and they’re given over two by two into rooms. Jamie is in first in hers, grabs the top bunk and hoists herself up. She’s put out by the fact that of all the women coming in, she’s apparently been granted the junkie. Even with the track-marks hidden, Jamie can see the shivers starting, the sweats, the desperate look in the girls eyes. Familiar and haunting, the streets are following her in here and she doesn’t like it._

_It’s confirmed when the girl sits down on the bunk and it immediately starts shifting with the tremors._

_Great._

_Jamie spreads out her sheets, tucking them in and adding the blanket before stretching out, hands under her head._

“ _Been here before?” The urgency of the tone from below doesn’t match the banality of the question._

“ _Nope.”_

“ _You look comfortable.”_

_Jamie shrugs, even though her bunk-mate can’t see her. “Yeah well, it’s not raining in here, there’s three meals a day, could be worse._

“ _My names Denise.”_

_Jamie considers her options and then decides it’s not dangerous to offer her name. “Jamie.”_

“ _You got… anything on you?”_

_Jamie rolls her eyes. “Nope.”_

“ _Some people you know… bring…”_

“ _Nope. Not my style.”_

_Besides, they’d all been comprehensively and completely checked, cavities included. Hadn’t been much fun. Oh there were ways. Jamie knew enough people who’d gotten gear in and out of prison while she’d run with her crowd. Half of them were in and out themselves, still with friends on the inside. Jamie had always sneered at them._

_Planning on keeping her sheet clean she was. What a fucking joke._

“ _What are you in for?”_

“ _Killing people for asking too many questions.”_

_For a mere second, the trembling stops, and then it begins again. “If you hear of anything you’ll let me know then.”_

_Jamie will not. She’s not about to organise a hit of smack for a bunk-mate she already doesn’t like. Jamie is going to keep her head down, and do her time. Somehow, she really should have seen herself heading here, but if she’s stuck, she’s not going to make herself more stuck. She’s going to eat her three meals a day and not have to sleep in the rain, and for once, she’s going to do it right._

_This time._


	13. In Which Jamie Gets All The Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissing Dani is the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. It's been a week. 
> 
> Hoping to get some writing done today, so this may be all wrapped up soon. Oh my babies, i'm going to miss them. 
> 
> Thank you for all your comments. If you haven't even left one and you feel like maybe dropping one to let me know you liked it, then it would absolutely make my day from here till eternity. Could use the good vibes this week!

Kissing Dani is hands down, without a doubt, the best thing Jamie has ever done in her life. Just lying here on the couch, with one hand tucked under them, and one hand gently woven through Dani’s hair, Jamie thinks she could keep kissing forever. It doesn’t feel like a prelude to anything. It feels like a gift, in and of itself, one that she wants to cherish.

It feels so damn good, little frissons of sensation guided out by every touch, every stroke of a tongue, and yet, Jamie feels absolutely no urgency to move them anywhere. Even though there’s a fire burning in her gut. Even though she’s more wet from a kiss than she’s ever been before in her life. Even though – still – she feels no urgency.

It is absolutely new and wonderful and for the first time in her life, she finds oxygen a curse. Why, why does she have to breathe, and take her lips away from Dani’s. It’s not fair. She should just be able to keep kissing her, here, well after midnight on what was the best first day of the year ever.

It’s Dani who pulls away reluctantly, looking down with pink, gorgeous lips and a half smile from where she’s pressed against Jamie. She tries, very poorly, to conceal the yawn that comes by ducking her head down and pressing her forehead into Jamie’s shoulder.

“OK, that’s our cue then. Bedtime for you.” Jamie tucks Dani’s hair behind her ears and then, for good measure, kisses her forehead. When she pulls back, Dani’s eyes are wide and looking at her with an expression of both deep interest and some trepidation. It takes Jamie a minute.

“Oh… no no no… you in your bed and me in mine.”

She can’t help see, at this close distance, the gentle swallow of Dani’s throat. Part of her wants to duck in, kiss it, taste it, bite down gently and see what kind of a reaction it creates, but now is positively not the right time.

“We… I mean, we don’t have to… we could…” Dani stuttering is adorable.

Jamie tips her head up and looks at her gently. “Trust me?”

Dani nods.

“Slow. No need to rush anything yeah? Plenty of other nights coming, and we’ll be here for them.”

Dani exhales. If it was just Dani, then Jamie would have been perfectly happy to follow her lead, let the dice fall where they may and speed up. Jamie though, needs it to be slow. She needs them not to rush through whatever this is, while her mind catches up. Dani, it would appear, is OK with that.

Lying in bed, staring at that old familiar ceiling, she wonders now if she’s crazy. She wonders if Dani’s doing the same thing, next door, going crazy. If she thought that either of them had the self control, she’d have hauled Dani into her own bed. For the first time in her life, the idea of having someone close to her, wrapped up in her, just there, is as exciting as the notion of unwrapping them like a birthday present.

All Jamie wants is Dani, however she comes.

She’s up early in the morning, as usual, and can hear Dani’s sleep noises emanate quietly from her room. It’s not snoring, per se, it’s more, tiny little sleepy sounds that have always been utterly adorable to Jamie. She’s tried, desperately, not to listen to them, but failed on most occasions. The walls here are thin, and Dani’s room doesn’t have a door so much as a curtain.

Normally she’d go down to the greenhouse, or open the shop early. Some days, when up this early, she’d even head out to the Manor, but this morning she can’t. She needs to see Dani. So, for lack of anything else to do, she makes tea. Dani will get coffee from Owen later, but Jamie needs her tea.

She’s leaning against the counter drinking it when Dani emerges, looking utterly adorable in her sleep addled state.

“Mornin’” Jamie grins around the rim of her cup. “Sleep well?”

“Kinda,” Dani grins back, sauntering over until she’s within a metre of Jamie. “Dreams were interesting.”

Jamie freezes on the rim of her mug. “Oh?”

“Mmm. Very interesting.” Dani shifts a little closer, until Jamie has no choice but to put down her mug, grab the front of her t-shirt and pull her in until they’re flush. No choice at all.

“Good Morning,” she whispers again, before dipping her head down.

Every kiss is better than the last. Tasting morning Dani’s sweetness, with a hint of her own tea and toothpaste, is like ambrosia. She hums into it, tracing her tongue along Dani’s bottom lip before deepening the kiss until Dani’s hands are clutching at her t-shirt. The tiny whimper that emerges from Dani’s lips pushes Jamie’s self-control to the limits. It would be so easy to lift the shirt in her hands over Dani’s head, kiss down to those perfect breasts she knows are under there. To take one nipple in her mouth and suck until Dani is calling her name, hands loosening the ties on Dani’s sleep pants, pushing them down.

How would Dani taste? How would she feel around her fingers, like warm, hot silk, gripping as she came?

Instead Jamie pulls back and leans her forehead gently against Dani’s. “You right to open up if I go to the Manor for a few hours?”

Dani smiles, nods at her, still a little sleepy at the edges.

It’s mundane, Jamie thinks, how they go about things. Like they haven’t changed everything in a single moment, spinning around them. Like Jamie’s life hasn’t launched itself forward like a slingshot, into something that could be the marvelous world she has ever beheld, something that will break her into all her component pieces or, most likely, both. She could dwell on it, worry about it, give it more thought.

Instead, they eat breakfast.

She goes to the Manor and Dani opens the store. She gets them their morning coffees and avoids Owen’s knowing grin. Or what he thinks is a knowing grin, except he’s wrong. Jamie is rather proud of herself for that: for not running when she can walk, for taking the time that she knows she needs rather than flailing around like a frog in a pot of boiling water.

When the store is empty, she loops her arm around Dani’s waist from one side and gives her a very quick kiss on the cheek, just to remind herself that apparently she can. The almost cheesy grin she gets in reply tells her that yes, she can, probably whenever she wants.

Fresh air after being shut in a box for hours on end; food at the end of a month long fast; rain, when the day has baked you into the very clay – these are the things Jamie is reminded of. Is it so bad that she wants to savour?

If Owen sends her teasing text messages about their holing themselves up for the next few evenings instead of socialising as they usually do, then she feels no regret at replying with “fuck off you prat”, grinning though as she does so. She certainly has no regrets over making out with Dani on the couch like a couple of teenagers, all loose limbs and sliding fingers. She keeps them skirting along the edges of second base, knowing that neither of them has all that much control, but it’s fun. It’s fun to push that control to it’s limits and know that she and Dani have time. They can learn and explore and laugh.

She learns that Dani likes tiny biting kisses along the edge of her jaw, and that if Jamie uses her tongue right just under her ear, the gasps are phenomenal. When Dani teases her fingers across the small of Jamie’s back, just scratching along the skin, Jamie discovers something new of her own. Her brain offers a flash of a vision of Dani’s nails much harder, scraping down her whole spine, and that sends her reeling and she has to pull back from a confused looking Dani, not happy at having her kiss interrupted.

“Did I tickle?”

“No,” Jamie gasps. “Didn’t know I liked it.”

“Oh.” Dani’s eyes go wide, and then her grin turns feral. “Well… lets see what else we can find.” She pulls Jamie back in and Jamie goes willingly.

They make-out long enough one morning, Jamie pressed up against the kitchen counter with Dani’s arms framing her, to be late opening the shop. The weekend comes, and Jamie can’t bring herself to wrench away from Dani enough not to drag her up to the Manor. The more work she gets done on the weekend, the more time she can spend making Dani giggle and gasp and moan. It’s hard enough to get work done with Dani around, stopping every now and then for handless kisses, nails replete with soil, just lips brushing and deepening until Jamie has to pull back. If she doesn’t, she’s going to end up pushing Dani right down in the dirt and it’s definitely not warm enough for that.

Jamie wonders, briefly, if this is what being a teenager is like. Pushing your libido to it’s limits before breaking away from the temptation. If it’s grinding on the sofa until you can’t take any more but you don’t go any further. She can’t really explain why she’s holding back from taking Dani to bed, from making love to her the way they both want, but it seems right, so she’s going with it.

Maybe she’s waiting for a sign. Maybe she’s just waiting for it to feel completely right. Maybe she’s just waiting to make sure it doesn’t go away. Whatever it is, like all other things Dani in her life, Jamie is not fighting it.

It’s two am when it happens again and she wakes, sitting bold upright, sweat dripping from her brow and limbs trembling like a tree in a storm. She looks up, sees Dani shuffling in the doorway and knows that she’s cried out again. She knows that the nightmare still thrumming in her blood has spilled out across the apartment. Quicksilver threads of memories are still spinning, making her nauseous as Dani silently comes into her room, and closes the door behind her.

She says nothing as she moves around to the side of the bed Jamie doesn’t sleep on, and pulls back the covers climbing in. If nothing else, the slight confusion it brings to Jamie helps the terror abate. She’s not as drenched as she usually is, which is a good thing because Dani is reaching for her – and she goes.

She lets Dani drag her down to the bed, tucked in to her side, inhaling the scent she’s come to love so much. It’s comfort and home and all the good things that Jamie has wanted her whole life. It’s safe and warm in Dani’s arms and the soft kiss to her cheek, to her forehead, fingers smoothing back her hair, are the most soothing thing she has ever known. It doesn’t fix the turmoil roiling in her, nothing will do that, but it does push it back from the edges. And Dani is just there, holding her, fingers gently moving on her back, saying nothing for long minutes until Jamie’s breathing evens out.

Dani is there, holding her, until the hand that’s been gently stroking her back falls to the bed. Dani is still there, asleep but solid, a presence in her bed holding back the night time. Not a single word has been spoken. Dani is there, when Jamie’s eyes close in a way they never have before, exhausted from the nightmare but now, somehow, able to sleep.

Dani is still there, in the morning, when she wakes.

**********

_It is a very good thing, Jamie thinks, that she has learned to pivot on a dime since the age of five. Prison does not take time to teach people anything. Prison is hard, it’s meant to be, and for Jamie, its edges do not take time to appear, they’re there from the very beginning._

_Jamie learns what a shiv is very fast. She doesn’t acquire one, but she knows how to spot them, avoid them, pull herself in tight._

_Jamie learns what the currency of prison is, and how to make sure she’s got enough to keep herself safe but not enough to be a threat to anyone._

_Jamie learns that she’s probably a little bit too pretty for prison, and into her pillow one night she laughs about it. She actually laughs about it. Jamie, who has never considered herself a particularly attractive person laughs because too many women are showing just how pretty they think she is. She’s grateful then, for Katie’s little lessons in life. Pretty doesn’t mean safe, and an arm around her shoulder is not a barrier in this world. She gets very good at a crooked smile, a thanks but no-thanks, and finds herself hiding in the last three places she ever thought she would._

_The library makes the most sense to her. Books, always a way out, have been there for Jamie a long time. A prison library doesn’t offer the greatest selection, but it gives her a good grounding in the classics, and the way language can roll around her tongue if she wants it to._

_The greenhouse, well that comes as much more of a surprise. For a person raised in dust, and grime, and the tiny hard gravel of the city wired into her very core, the cool dark loam is foreign territory like a battlefield. And she treats it as one, at first, fighting it, until a few gentle words from older souls guide her, until she finds herself moving with it, growing with it, and it grows in her. After awhile they trust her with trowels and garden forks, to nurture vegetables and flowers and all kinds of life into something real. After awhile, she becomes the greenhouse and the greenhouse becomes her._

_The psychologists office is the last place she ever expected anyone to find her_ _hiding._ _Mandatory, they said. Mandatory didn’t mean Jamie had to talk. Spill enough secrets and your guts will spill with them is a lesson she’s learned enough times_ _so talking is hard._ _Turns out, talking to Tamara is the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life, but for some unknowable, unfathomable reason, she does it anyway. She tells herself its just to shut her up. Relentless Tamara who won’t give up on Jamie, won’t give up on making her talk, gets just what she asks for._

_Just to shut her up._

_Just to let the gravel pieces out, bit by bit, a breadcrumb trail back to the tiny little girl in the back of a car screaming for her brother._

_It helps. It doesn’t fix anything, but it helps. It all helps._

_Prison, for all the fucking horror it brings, helps. The stability of it, the routine and the predictability is key, and Jamie doesn’t hate it. She loses her bunk mate fairly soon on in the piece, predictable there too. Smack isn’t hard to come by in prison, but clean smack is, and she’s solo sleeping for a day or two soon._

_Her second bunk mate is much more to Jamie’s liking. Cara doesn’t take any shit, doesn’t give any shit, but also doesn’t make any waves. She has a sense of humour, grinning wryly around the fact that this is her second turn and if she had any sense, she’d really stop trying to resell stolen luxury cars just to impress girls._

_They become, for want of a better term, friends. Jamie doesn’t trust anyone, Cara doesn’t trust anyone, but it helps in prison to have someone who is vaguely watching your back. They gather a few more to them, women who want no trouble, just want to see out their time and have no interest in the politics of the prison yard. Women who will share cigarettes and noodles, chocolate and a good book, without having to owe and pay and be owned or own._

_If some of the others sneak off and pair up, then Jamie is content to leave the world be to her own hand for three years. Three long years, for the crime of stealing passports and cash, breaking and entering. Three long years of toil in gardens, and spilling her secrets to Tamara, and laughing with Cara in the few hours a day they can see the sun and sky._

_They go faster than she thinks they will, her little world coalesced into the few things she can control and a life suddenly giving her time to catch her breath. They let her out after two years – time off for excellent behaviour and a character reference from Tamara that’s practically glowing._

_She walks out, with literally nothing in her hands, and a set of second hand donated clothes on her back. There is no one waiting for her when she steps into the light, the metal clang of the door echoing behind her. There is no one waiting to kiss her, or kill her, or anything in between. There is just freedom, and air, and an uncertain future wavering in front of her._

_Jamie takes her first step forward, and doesn’t stop._


	14. In Which Jamie Takes Her Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie may be scared, but she's not stupid. Stupid would be giving up this chance just because of fear. 
> 
> Jamie is not stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you all stop yelling at me now? (I'm kidding, keep yelling, keep yelling!) 
> 
> This is going to wind up in a few chapters. I feel like I've squeezed most of the angst out of it. 
> 
> Rated M for sweet, sweet loving. 
> 
> Edited by me, and I'm REALLY fucking tired so it's probably chock full of errors. Just, veer around them like traffic cones or something.

Chapter 14

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, sliding Dani’s sandwich from Owen over the counter to her at lunch. “About last night, I’m sorry.”

Dani has enough regard for her not to feign confusion. “Don’t think you should be.”

“Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I know.” Dani bites into her sandwich. “Not upset you did anyway.”

Jamie thinks about making some kind of joke about it being a ploy to get Dani into her bed, but she bites it back. There is a gravitas in the situation she doesn’t want to edge away from. Actually, that’s a lie, part of her wants to wrench and run, skidding into the horizon, but not all of her does and that’s important.

“They don’t happen as much anyway.” It’s true. They don’t. Through the years, they have ebbed. Some of it the peace, some of it Tamara, and some in it’s own way, Dani.

“Is it OK, that I came in?” Dani regards her while chewing, like this isn’t one of the most profound conversations Jamie has ever had despite there being lettuce somehow involved.

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

It really is. It’s OK that Dani came in. Not into her room, but into her life, into her hands and her heart, and it’s OK. Jamie lets that sink in to her. Like smoke, hazy and thick, it seeps up into her and she feels her skin shiver in response. It’s OK.

“Owen’s cooking lasagne tonight, wanted you to know.” Dani tosses the rubbish from her sandwich into the bin and hops up, dusting off the counter. “He said to tell you there’d be garlic bread.”

Jamie can’t help but appreciate that this isn’t a big deal to Dani. Jamie’s broken dreams and fractured past seeping into their day hasn’t phased her at all. Jamie doesn’t know if she should be profoundly relieved or frightened to hell. She decides the former is in order and goes with it.

But she doesn’t want dinner with Owen and Hannah tonight.

“Is it OK if we don’t? Well, you can, I mean I wouldn’t tell you what…I just don’t… I you can...” Jamie cuts off, wondering if she could butcher the thoughts flying through her mouth any better than she had.

Dani looks amused. “Rather stay in?”

“Is that alright?” Jamie manages sheepish. It’s a slight improvement on catastrophic embarrassment.

“Yep. I’ll let him know, I said I’d pop by shortly to help out. Hannah has a hair appointment and he has something cooking he doesn’t want to take his eye off.”

“Hannah doesn’t have any hair.”

“Which does not happen spontaneously.”

Jamie looks genuinely bewildered. “She doesn’t just do it herself?”

Dani shrugs. “Nope. Can’t all cut our hair with garden shears.”

“Hey! I go to the hairdresser!”

Dani just laughs as she walks out the door and Jamie can’t help but smile as she goes. She doesn’t know how to put into words that she just wants to spend time with Dani at the moment. Maybe it’s that cherished idea of a honeymoon period, maybe it’s something else, but Jamie is leaning in. Leaning in enough that she steals kisses for the rest of the day, dragging Dani into the back room for teasing lips and gentle hands between customers, and once, just across the counter because why not.

It carries her through the day, through the afternoon, and into the evening, walking up the stairs to their apartment like she’s seeing everything with new eyes, excited eyes. It carries her in, coats hung and shoes toed off at the door, Dani heading to the kitchen like she does every evening to figure out dinner before Jamie snags her by the wrist and turns her back instead.

She brings her hands up, cupping Dani’s face and kisses her like she’s been wanting to all day: slow, deep and full of everything her heart feels. Kissing her like she never wants to stop, and in this small bubble of time she doesn’t have to. It’s everything all at once, when Dani’s hands come to her waist and they steal all the moments for themselves.

The tsunami carries her forward, her fingers coming up shakily to undo the top button of Dani’s blouse, pulling back to check those blue eyes that widen when she does so. She runs a fingertip along a perfect, collarbone, then chases it with gentle kisses, working her way back up to Dani’s lips. They meet her, equal and parted, warm and so tender.

It’s Dani’s hands pulling Jamie’s shirt from her pants, so that they can rest on the bare skin at the base of spine. It’s Dani’s hands pulling her back in for the kisses she craves, so that she knows she’s not alone in this. She can feel it in every touch, every brush of their lips.

She’s not alone in this.

Jamie cannot explain how she ends up standing by her bed, undoing Dani’s blouse with trembling fingers and shaky breath. She cannot explain how it is that she’s curling Dani’s loose hair behind her ears, kissing her cheeks, eyelids, nose, gently cupping, wanting, breathing her in. Dani’s hands are not passive, pulling Jamie’s shirt until she’s tossed it over her head, until they’re back in each others arms, Jamie’s finger tips drifting up and down Dani’s bare arms, whisper touches.

“This… I’ve never done this… not with…” Dani whispers. Jamie doesn’t make her fill in the gaps, doesn’t need to.

Instead she smiles wryly. “I’ve never done it with someone I… care about. Not like this.”

There’s an understanding between them that’s not new, but somehow, fills the space. Jamie can’t stop touching, fascinated with Dani’s soft skin and the tiny little noises that come from her when fingertips find a particularly sensitive spot. She does discover what the skin under Dani’s ear tastes like, has to go back again and again, nuzzling. Her fingers deftly find the zipper on Dani’s skirt, sliding it to the floor, shedding her own slacks. Hands on Dani’s hips while her mouth moves on her neck, she walks them back until the bed is there.

Dani on the bedspread, waiting with open mouth, wet lips, and a gaze that says she wants this as much as Jamie is more than Jamie could possibly have hoped for. Clothes find their way to the floor, as kisses turn long, lips drift down skin. Jamie takes her time because some things are worth lingering over, and everything merges into one.

It is later, when she is lying with Dani cuddled in to her shoulder, stroking bare skin along her arm, that Jamie stops to think. At some point, she lost herself to the sheer overwhelming maelstrom that being with Dani was. Jamie had been with girls, and on technical points, she knew what she thought sex was. This had been nothing like she knew.

She’d never had a melding of two people – bodies, hands, tongues, skin, so synchronised, that it was like a dance. She’d never made love before, and now she knew it.

At a base level, she knew it had been good for Dani. The panting moans, the nail marks down her back, the keening cry with Dani arching beneath her, face a montage of pleasure and shock as the orgasm tore through her – these things are fused into Jamie’s brain. Even now, they make her swallow and her centre clench as she imagines being able to do it again, to elicit those responses again.

She turns slightly, bringing them more face to face, running her hands along Dani’s sides until she can rest them on the bare real estate of Dani’s hip, bringing them forehead to forehead.

“OK?” She murmurs.

“Pretty good yeah,” Dani replies with a laugh. “You?”

Jamie smiles. Having someone check in with her? That’s new. Jamie likes it. “Better than.”

Dani’s determined face, fingers, breathless inquiries as to what Jamie liked had been welcomed, perfect, and damn effective. Dani’s delighted noises when Jamie came for her had been almost as amazing as the orgasm that had left her breathless and noodled on the bed.

It’s Jamie who pulls Dani in, until they’re flush. It should, and it is, be arousing, Dani pressed up against her like this, warm and naked. But it’s more, so much more, and Jamie wants to bask in it for a few moments. It’s like there’s a kaleidoscope of all her senses at once, and she drowns in it, drinks it in. She could stay here forever, but she hears Dani’s quite whisper of her name and has to pull back because it has a question in it’s lilt.

“Mmm?”

“Don’t… don’t run away.”

Now Jamie has to pull back properly, lift herself up on an elbow so she can look down at Dani, Dani who has serious eyes and a haunted hint of fear in them. Dani, who is now holding on to her with a firmness that wasn’t there a second ago.

“Run away?” She could make a wry smile, look down at their entwined naked bodies and make some joking comment, but she owes Dani more than that.

“From this. From us.”

Jamie chooses her words carefully, very aware that this fragile moment needs to be softly carried. “I won’t. I can’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to.” She kisses Dani’s forehead gently, breathing in her shampoo and closing her eyes. She feels Dani’s arms around her, pulling her impossibly closer but now holding, not tense or gripping.

“Good.”

Jamie chuckles. “Definitely not dressed for it right now anyway.”

Dani swats at her, but the fear in her eyes is gone, they’re just fresh and sparkling, warm and full of affection. Jamie ducks her head down, kisses her because she can’t not. Her fingers begin to move as she rolls Dani over, moves down, runs her lips down the arch of that exquisite neck and cups a perfect breast, bringing the nipple to a hard peak with her thumb and drinking in the strangled gasp from above. She keeps her lips moving south, stopping to run her tongue around Dani’s navel before moving ever down trailing kisses.

She can feel the tension in Dani’s legs as she settles between them, looks up and catches her eye. “Can I?”

She can tell that Dani is unsure but it’s a nervousness of inexperience, not of dissension and Jamie grins when there’s a nod.

One taste, and she’s done. One taste and she’s addicted. One taste and she knows she could be here for eternity. If the surprised cry from Dani when Jamie strokes her tongue firmly upwards is anything to go by, she’s unlikely to complain, and Jamie lets it carry her away.

*******************************

_Jamie’s foot taps nervously on the laminate floor. Her coffee is mostly untouched, cupped in her hands, but she doesn’t need the extra nervous energy it will bring, she only bought it because it seemed like the right thing to do. She knows exactly when she walks through the door, not the least because she looks so out of place in this coffee shop, this town. Jamie stands up, wipes her palms nervously on the only decent pair of slacks she owns and swallows._

_She’s gorgeous, in that put together way that only rich women with class have, and Jamie blinks at her. She spots Jamie, walks over, a genuine smile on her face._

“ _Miss Taylor?”_

“ _Yeah. Yes, uh, Jamie,” she proffers a hand, because that’s the right thing to do. “Can, can I order you a coffee?”_

“ _Charlotte,” she takes the hand and shakes it. “I’ll get a tea if we can?”_

_Tea ordered, and re-seated, Jamie swallows again. Never in her dreams did she expect to be sitting here, in this time and place, with this opportunity in front of her. Nothing about the journey of the last few weeks felt anything less than surreal, but here she was. Parole officers were notoriously awful and unhelpful, so how Jamie of all people landed a decent one she did not know. How she landed one who helped her gain and secure employment at the landscaping firm she’d been at, she also didn’t know. She strongly suspected her boss had done time, from the gruff, firm look of him. She didn’t ask, he didn’t tell and it worked fine._

_Jamie needed out though, out of London, out of the heat and the oppression and her tiny flat full of stoner idiots. She needs a new start, and they all know it. Her parole is up, she’s a completely free woman now. She’s been cut loose. Which is why, when Tom had called her up and directed her to the job in the paper, she had been quite simply speechless. Parole officers didn’t_ do _that. They didn’t give a fuck about the scruffy asses they’d been sent to babysit. Jamie didn’t have that kind of luck, but apparently it had happened so Jamie had gone with it._

_Now, here she was, sitting in front of Charlotte Wingrave really kidding herself that she can talk her way into a job at a huge country manor._

“ _I’ve seen your resume and your references, they’re good.” Charlotte smiles at her, sipping the Irish Breakfast she’d ordered. “But honestly Jamie, it was your cover letter that caught my eye.”_

_Jamie can’t help blush. She was hardly Wordsworth, but she’d poured her heart and soul into that damn letter._

“ _You really like plants.” It’s a statement, and given with an amused smile on those perfectly drawn lips._

“ _I do,” Jamie admits. “I really do.”_

“ _It’s a big grounds, and you’d be responsible for them alone, could you manage that?”_

_Jamie nods. “Maintenance is easier than construction, but yes, easily. I don’t have other things to take up my time if that’s what you’re worried about.”_

“ _Well obviously you’d have the usual time off. Five days a week, of your choice, and holidays and such. We’re not open to the public, so it’s really just keeping it looking spruced for us.” Charlotte smiles at her. “Tell me why you love plants.”_

_Jamie can’t help herself. The last three years she’s put herself through an intensive course in everything gardening, everything botany. She’s devoured every book she can find in the library, in second hand book stores. She’s experimented, stayed up late, worked early and learned. She has no piece of paper, no document that says she knows these things, but she does. She really does. And she cannot find the words to express how digging her fingers into cool, clean soil makes her feel, how watching a bud unfold makes her heart slow and calm, how coaxing life into being makes her soul sing. She tries anyway, and it’s only when she realises she’s been talking for five minutes that she colours again and stutters to a stop._

_Charlotte does look amused, but also warm and almost mother like._

“ _Well, I can see you’re passionate.”_

_Jamie just clears her throat._

“ _I should warn you, if you take the job you’ll have a few children underfeet. There’s a nanny, but they’re just shy of two and four, so they have a tendency to run amok a little bit.” Since Mikey, Jamie has never really had much to do with kids, doesn’t really consider herself either a fan or a detractor, but there is something very lovely about the look that passes across Charlotte’s face as she talks about her children._

“ _I… obviously it’s their house,” Jamie says. “That would never be a problem.”_

“ _Well, I think that’s all in order then,” Charlotte puts down her tea cup. “When can you start?”_

_Jamie, usually a master at hiding her feelings, knows that her shock must show on her face. “I… really?”_

_Charlotte has yet to stop smiling. “You do want the job yes?”_

“ _Yes, god yes, definitely,” Jamie breathes in and out, trying to calm her frantic heart. “But…”_

“ _Mmm.”_

_It’s time, she thinks, it’s time to start this right. “You do know that I’m… I’ve….”_

_Charlotte doesn’t answer, doesn’t push her, gives her space and time, and she takes another deep breath._

“ _I have a record. You should know.”_

_There’s a soft noise, another even softer smile. “I know. It’s in your paperwork. It also says you’ve done your time.”_

_Jamie nods._

“ _I quite strongly believe that people deserve second chances Jamie. I also believe that loyalty and respect tend to go quite far. Can you assure me that you’re done with that life?”_

_Jamie looks up sharply, answers so fast it almost spits out. “Yes. Absolutely yes.”_

“ _Well then, I don’t see that we have a problem. When can you start?”_

“ _Right now,” Jamie says fiercely, grasping the lifeline thrown as though she’s just tipped off the Titanic. “I can start right now.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. No seriously. Thank you. This place has given me so much warmth. The comments are just divine. Thank you


	15. In Which Jamie is Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie basks a little 
> 
> CN for - Smut and Canon Character death/suicide (in the flash back bits in italics - if you need to miss. Nothing graphic)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, Penultimate chapter. 
> 
> Don't know how i'm gonna feel when this is all over. 
> 
> Have had a bloody rough week so, posting this to soak up the dopamine and serotonin your comments give me. Feed me please. Pretty please.

“OK, OK, we really, really need to get to Owen’s,” Jamie breathes out, whimpering because Dani’s mouth is on her neck and it’s so hard to pull away, so hard to stop. “Fuck… baby…”

Dani’s hand creeps further up under her shirt and a nail scrapes across her nipple through Jamie’s bra. “We can be late,” she murmurs against Jamie’s neck, hot and wet. Jamie shudders.

“I… god… do that again,” her hips jerk as Dani’s fingers close around her nipple and pinch gently again, as ordered. Her brain and body are on fire, and her fingers are gripping Dani’s hips fervently. They had dinner plans, solid dinner plans, but Dani had looked at her and then she was pinned to the tiny wall between their bedroom doorways and now all she wants to do is haul Dani into her room, onto the bed and revel in her for hours.

Like she has for so many nights. Its been nearly a month since Dani has even had to make her own bed, unslept in as it was.

Dani’s fingers are nimbly undoing her belt, sliding her zipper down and Jamie doesn’t have it in her to stop those fingers from creeping inside, sliding down to find her exactly as wet as Jamie knows she already is. She drinks Dani’s moan, jerking her hips again, grinding down against those long fingers.

“God you feel so good,” Dani mutters against her lips, “how do you always feel this good?”

Jamie can’t answer because her voice is caught in her throat as Dani’s fingers find her swollen clitoris and begin moving across it in a rhythm that takes no prisoners. It’s almost embarrassing how fast Dani can bring her to the edge, make her whimper and beg, but she doesn’t have it in her to complain.

“Please, baby, please, feels.. yes… Jesus yes,” she groans and then lets out an indignant noise when Dani’s fingers are suddenly absent. “What, Dani… fuck…” She’s too far gone for them to just stop here. She realises that Dani has no intention of stopping when she feels her jeans and underwear wrenched down her legs and Dani is kneeling.

“Fuck, fuck, yes,” she whispers. Her hands find Dani’s hair, not guiding but resting, holding on for the ride.

  
It’s quick and dirty and Dani’s tongue is so fucking hot and hard against her. She can’t stop her hips from moving, chasing, or the rising volume of her moans. She definitely can’t stop when two fingers slip inside her and without preamble, curl and fuck her until she comes with a strangled groan of Dani’s name, shaking against her mouth until she slumps, nearly falling over.

“Fuck,” she says one last time. Dani stands just in time for Jamie to catch her licking the gloss of Jamie from her lips and grabs for her. “God come here.”

Dani catches her wrist just as she aims for the clasp on Dani’s skirt. “Mmm, we have to go.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jamie looks at her with wide eyes, still naked from the waist down and shaking. “You cannot be serious.”

“We’re already late,” Dani points out. She quickly ducks into the kitchen and washes her face and hands in the sink. Jamie watches in confusion.

“Tell me you’re not turned on.”

“Can’t tell you that. I can tell you I can wait though.”

Jamie pulls up her pants, rearranges her clothes and tries to shake the fact that she just got fucked within an inch of her life from her. “I must look ridiculous.”

Dani gives her a grin. “Naah, gorgeous as always.”

“Seriously, do I need to,” she points at the bathroom.

Dani shakes her head. “I promise, only I’ll know.”

Jamie follows her out in a daze, head still reeling from the expertly delivered orgasm. Dani, as it turned out, was one hell of a quick learner. Focused and determined, and apparently afraid of almost nothing, she’d turned Jamie’s world on its head so fast she was still spinning. It was glorious. Her heart is still pounding as she trails Dani down the stairs.

By the time they get to Owen’s and Hannah’s, Jamie feels like she might have regained some steadiness. Not completely yet, but enough to hopefully fool Owen. The early spring air is still cool in the evenings, but Dani’s hand is warm in hers and when they get to their destination, the door is opened to a house full of love and amazing food smells and hugs of hello.

“You’re late,” Owen says into her ear during the hug.   
  
“Sorry, got caught up.”  
  


“Bet you did,” he looks at her knowingly and she rolls her eyes back. Owen is no fool.

It’s over a glass of red wine and a positively sinful dinner that Owen has conjured up, that Jamie finds her cheeks hurt. They hurt because she’s been smiling for hours. They hurt because she’s so happy, with Dani’s hand on her knee, and Owen laughing and making stupid puns, and Hannah looking so serenely peaceful and in her element that Jamie feels it all the way to her core: Happiness. It shows, she knows it shows because Owen leans over and says to her:

“You know, this is my favourite Jamie of all the Jamies.”

She gives him a quizzical look.

“Happy Jamie. Content Jamie. Should have gotten a girlfriend years ago you.”

She looks over at Dani, laughing over some joke with Hannah, and smiles back at him, too happy to even make a quip about it. “Think I just had to wait for the right one yeah?”

He nods, taking another sip of his own wine. “Yep, I know that feeling.” He doesn’t look at Hannah, and he doesn’t need to. Jamie looks at them both thoughtfully and the clarity of the moment is startling. Owen is happy, Hannah is happy, and they don’t need to be marching to a different beat to feel that.

Dani turns, gives her that amazing grin, the one that goes all the way to her eyes and Jamie feels it.

Happiness.

*************************

_They were good people, Charlotte and Dominic. They were good people and good parents and Jamie knows that the universe isn’t fair but, somehow, this shard of unfairness in her life seems to cut deeper than so many others. Maybe it’s watching the shadow of death as it’s cast across Flora and Miles’ faces. Jamie knows loss, knows it deep in her bones – perhaps not death, but a loss as permanent and fragile as the ones they’re feeling._

_And she feels now, does Jamie. So many years of not doing so, she’s let go a little, relaxed a little, let the feelings come, and right now she regrets it._

_She gardens, because that’s her job. She gardens and sits with Hannah and Owen, the three of them easy friends, built on three years of working together, eating together, being together. They accept Jamie into their fold, bring her in, a little trio of very different people who seem to gel. She gardens because it’s not her job to hold Flora and Miles together when it all seems like it’s falling apart, and even if she was inclined, there was no way for her to do so. Instead she watches them, makes sure someone is around to see them, listen if they need._

_She finds Flora at Charlotte’s grave a lot, helps her find flowers so that there’s fresh ones there always. She lets Flora talk to her about her mother and loss, sits and listens when the time is right. She does what she can. She cares when she can._

_There is retreat in her steps though, once he arrives. Jamie, so adept in her life at watching people, spots him as an apex predator as soon as he steps out of Dominic Wingrave’s car and lights a cigarette immediately, scanning his surroundings. If he sees her trimming the hedges, he doesn’t acknowledge her, and she makes no moves to catch his eye._

_It’s easy enough to watch Peter Quint from a distance, warily and carefully, because it becomes rapidly apparent that he has no time for interacting with the other staff. If he even considers himself staff, that is, he’s not about to hang around the fucking gardener and that’s just fine by Jamie. She has her greenhouse now, with it’s little beaten up couch and warm, moist air. She retreats, and that’s just fine._

_Then she comes, and Jamie doesn’t quite know what to do. Rebecca is friendly and gregarious and with the absence of any other grounding factors in the house, a massively welcome figure. She brings the children back out into the world, gives them the stability they need and Jamie feels the whole house relax again, like the very building and grounds had been holding tense for the last few months._

_It becomes clear that Henry Wingrave has no intention of living with them, or doing anything but managing the children and Bly from a distance. Jamie seems to still have a job, so she’s just fine with that. She sees less of Owen and Hannah, though both find some solace in her greenhouse from time to time, and she makes space for them. Rebecca too, has a way of worming her way in, and Jamie finds soon that whether she’d intended to or not, she has another friend. Rebecca, a bright star in the night sky shining in a way that endears her to everyone._

_She has another friend and she can see it happening from a mile away, the way that he looks at her, the way he circles her like a shark smelling blood. Jamie can see it happening, and like stuck behind sound proof glass, she can do nothing but watch. She watches as Rebecca is pulled in, and then watches as she’s pulled under._

_Peter Quint turns out to be the nightmare that she knew he was, that the others suspected he was. Peter fucking Quint is dangerous. Jamie watches and can do nothing as her friend is dragged in, and under and left half drowned on the beach by the sheer tide of fuckery that is Peter Quint._

_He steals a quarter of a million pounds from_ _Henry_ _and his passport is flagged crossing the Atlantic,_ _tracked_ _until he disappears into South America. He leaves Rebecca answering questions to the police, about just how much she knew and whether or not she’s to join him. He leaves her in the mud and the dirt and even though Jamie and Owen and Hannah are there, they cannot fix this for her. For Jamie, it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion and it makes her retreat even further. She pulls back into her skin, into her garden, into her greenhouse. It’s a stark reminder that the tiny world of warmth that had evolved here in Bly was not real, that the true, angry, biting world out there was still lurking. Jamie remembers, and she pulls back in._

_She pulls so far back in that when she finds her, it’s like she’s watching herself do it from a distance. There is Flora, standing, staring out across the lake. There is Jamie, picking her up, running her away, pulling her back. There is Jamie, desperately hiding Flora’s eyes, praying she can shield her from this. There is Jamie, hauling, hauling the body out of the lake but it’s too late, far too late. Rebecca’s serene countenance is long gone, cold, her body already stiff in the freezing waters and Jamie kneels by the lake, barely hears the others rushing in, Owen reaching her. She can’t move, won’t move, until the ambulance comes and they haul her inside for a warm shower and a change of clothes before hypothermia takes her to hospital._

_She can’t feel anything, so pulled back into herself, that she just sits in the kitchen, cradling a cup of tea and staring at Hannah who is at turns horrified and stoic, placid and agitated, so very un-Hannah_ _like_ _. They attend the funeral, and Jamie finds the only emotion in her_ _there_ _is low fury at a life wasted, stolen. Low fury that the Wingraves are absent,_ _Henry_ _having whisked the children away to London finally, plans to shut up the manor. Low fury that people have taken, and taken, and taken, and it’s just Owen, Hannah and herself here, with someone else lost to the fury of the world._

_Henry fires them, but gently. He’s still a fairly big deal in town, head of one of the largest firms there is. The scandal could be extremely damaging, so he goes into damage control. Jamie is the only one kept on, at a fraction of hours, to stop the grounds from going completely to jungle._

_The severance pay makes up for a lot, not all of it, but a lot. Owen can’t leave, doesn’t leave, thanks to his mum, and Jamie finds herself unwilling to go either. She’s found a home here, in Bly, a home that has been mostly good to her. She has nowhere else to go, her boots sucked into the mud of this place like quicksand, so she stays. The small shop next to the pub falls vacant and Jamie finds herself the owner of a small but functional flower and plant business. Slowly, the pain of losing Rebecca ebbs and just adds itself to the pile of loss living in Jamie’s soul._

_The cycle, she thinks, is now complete. She has achieved long awaited stasis of understanding that the world is a dreadful, cruel place that will cut her down if given the opportunity and also that if she holds very still, and very calm, then perhaps she can just be. She likes the quiet, the peace, the boring, boring life she’s managed to build. As she builds the shop, she develops a rhythm that’s soothing in its monotony. It’s safe._

_She has found the calm, and she doesn’t intend to disrupt it._


	16. In Which Jamie Steps Into The Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie gets the kick she needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really, genuinely sad this is over because I loved writing it. It came full circle in the end and, you know what, I'm really proud of it. 
> 
> Few more things in the works but it's super busy in my life so give me a little time. 
> 
> The love you guys have given me via the comment section has honestly given me so much strength to keep moving forward, keep writing, keep going. Thank you. Thank you so much.

More often than not, Jamie finds herself the little spoon. There’s something delightful about waking up with Dani’s arm looped over her waist and her nose making tiny noises at the back of Jamie’s neck. Something so delightful, in fact, that Jamie rarely if ever wants to leave her bed in the mornings. Her body clock, honed by years of early work and prison reveille, still wakes her up despite herself. Instead of scooting out of bed, smoking a cigarette and drinking down bitter coffee, she stays warm and cuddled and basks in the sensation.

Except today. Spring has been rearing its head recently, and Jamie has more work at the Manor than usual. Henry has been making murmurings about bringing the kids back to visit, and she wants to make sure that at the very least, the grounds are safe for them to run around. Then there’s the seedlings she’s been cultivating, they’ll need some attention. If she didn’t have Dani at the shop she’d be pulling ridiculous hours but she does have Dani and she’s very grateful for it.

She’s grateful for so much more, more than she can even put into words. Dani knows her now, really knows her, and hasn’t once looked away. It has come out, in drips, here and there, the past bleeding through, a story told. A child, a mother gone, a family fractured, love, loss, running, prison, it’s all come out one way or another. Never once, never, has Dani looked at her any differently. Never once has it made Dani step back, make a face of anything but love and understanding.

And Jamie is a goner. Jamie is an absolute goner. She just hasn’t said it out loud yet. Still, taking things slow with Dani had been the best decision of her life, and moving forward feels so good right now.

She slides out of bed and presses a kiss to Dani’s head when there’s a grumpy noise at the loss of a warm body.

“Heading up to the Manor. Keep sleeping.”

“No… s’not time. Come back t’bed.” Dani’s eyes are closed but her hands reach out, grabbing. Jamie chuckles. She’d love to. In fact she’d love to come back to bed but not go back to sleep and not let Dani go back to sleep either. Instead she presses another kiss down to Dani’s temple and whispers to her.   
  
“Sleep. I’ll be back with coffee later.”

Work at the Manor takes her more time than she’d like. Some branches have come down in a small glade she knows Miles likes to run through, and she has to clear them. It would have been lovely if Henry had given her some kind of time line for their arrival, but he hasn’t, so she reckons she should just have the place ready to go at a moments notice. That is what he’s paying her for after all.

She also knows that Dani has the shop in hand, but feels bad about leaving her there alone anyway. Nine o’clock comes around faster than she’d like and Jamie feels like she’s made decent headway. She may have to come back for an hour or two in the evening but she should be able to keep rolling on for the week now. A quick wash up, and she’s back in the car, already thinking about Dani’s smile when she delivers coffee. A kiss maybe, if there’s no one around.

If she was being honest, she’d admit to daydreaming about dragging Dani into the back room, propping her up on the desk and making her come in long waves under her tongue, but that remains in the realm of unlikely. The radio is on, and the sun is shining, and Jamie taps along on the steering wheel feeling more content than she can remember until she pulls into the main street of town.

The first thing she notices, because it’s impossible not to, is the line of giant trucks on the street. Red, lights flashing, ladders extended and pouring endless streams of water on to the pub. The pub which, right now, has a giant column of smoke coming straight to the sky, off the roof of Jamie’s own apartment.

There are no words for the gripping, solid fear that becomes her insides. She pulls into the curb as close as she can, a fog of inescapable panic eclipsing her. Does she close the car door? She doesn’t know, she’s running. She’s running down the pavement and her feet may or may not be touching the ground but she needs to get there and she’s not getting there fast enough. There’s noise and yelling and the goddamn pub is on fire and she can’t get to Dani.

Dani.

At some point she thinks she’ll wake up. She thinks that she’ll sit bolt upright in bed and this will be a new nightmare for her. Not one that’s steeped in the past, of wandering hands and painful bruises, disappearing eyes and angry voices, but a new one. One that predicts the future where all Jamie holds dear crumbles in her hands. She’ll wake up. She will.

She doesn’t notice Owen until he catches her, quite literally around the waist as she tries to run past.

“Jamie, Jamie stop…”

“Dani… I…Dani…”

“I know… They’re in there. The firemen are in there. You can’t help.”

But she has to help. She has to get to Dani she has to. Her feet are no longer moving because Owen is holding her and she’s sagged down in his grip, her entire world feeling like it’s fading to black. All she can smell is smoke and the acrid taste of acid in the back of her throat. There’s sirens, more sirens, and she can hear Owen murmuring in her ear, having pulled them back to a safe distance behind the cordoned area set out by the emergency personnel.

She lets out the strangled sob she didn’t even know she was holding in.

“It’ll be ok. Jamie it’ll be ok. Your shop will be fine.”

“I don’t care about the fucking shop,” she struggles for a second in his grasp. “Owen…”

“It’s ok. She’ll be ok. The fire is downstairs and next door.She’ll be ok Jamie.” He holds her arms now, gently, but enough to stop her moving, rubbing his hands up and down her biceps.

“Where is she?” is what she whispers, over and over. “Where is she?”

An indescribable feeling of relief floods her immediately when a fireman appears with Dani in his arms, and it takes all of Owen’s strength to hold on to her again as she tries to dart forwards.

“Give them a second mate, just a second.” He’s pulling her to the side, around the gathering crowd to the waiting ambulance and Jamie is grateful that Owen has appraised the situation in a way that she’s incapable of. When they finally get there, pushing and jostling, Dani is strapped to a gurney with an oxygen mask over her face, smoke stained but her eyes are open. Her eyes are open and they search out for Jamie, finding her and there’s a look that Jamie catches as their fingers brush, she reaches out, that tells her Dani is there, and Dani is going to be OK.

“’Scuse us love gotta get her in the bus,” says the paramedic who pushes past her as Owen still holds her back. As tempted as she is to throw herself in the back of the ambulance and refuse to be separated, she doesn’t fight him because Dani is there and Dani is OK. Dani is alive and Dani is OK.

The ride to the hospital must happen, because she’s in Owen’s car and then she’s at the Emergency Room doors, but she cannot put together how it’s happened, her hands trembling in her lap. They approach the desk, and Owen politely asks the triage nurse if they can see Miss Dani Clayton.

“Are you family?” She looks from one to the other, her eyes taking in Jamie’s tear stained face and inability to stand still, and Owen’s charming smile shining out from under his moustache.

“Yes.” Owen says firmly.

“Give me a minute if you will.” She nods to the waiting room chairs but Jamie does not sit. She doesn’t think she’s capable of it.

Its not long before they’re ushered through a double set of white doors and scurrying down a long corridor behind a nurse, until they reach an area with a large hanging sign that says ‘Resus’. Jamie’s heart has stopped, she thinks, so she’s quite grateful that her brainstem is still carrying her forward.

And there she is, finally, lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask with her eyes closed and blonde hair in disarray against the pillow. Jamie hears her own half cry half whimper as she can’t hold in, and she doesn’t care that everyone else can hear too. She slides into the chair next to Dani and gently, so gently, places her hand on Dani’s.

Nothing, she thinks, could be more beautiful or more of a relief, than those blue, blue eyes flickering open and finding hers.

“Hey baby,” she whispers, rubbing her thumb across Dani’s hand. It feels solid, real and warm. She’s OK. A mantra, like ticker tape in her brain. She’s OK, She’s OK, She’s OK.

Dani tries, of course, to talk, pulling at her mask with her free hand until Jamie reaches over and gently stops her, readjusting the mask.

“Leave that, you need it. You can talk later.”

Dani nods, and Jamie sees the tears gathering in the edges of her eyes. She doesn’t care that they’re in public, definitely doesn’t care that Owen is standing right there. She leans down and kisses her on the forehead and then rests their heads together. They stay like that for an eon, until a nurse comes to take a blood pressure and Jamie is forced to move backwards. Dani has wound their fingers so tightly together that she can’t move too far but the nurse just gives them an understanding smile and manages her magic on the other side of the bed.

At some point a doctor arrives, and Jamie tries to listen, she really does, but the blood is still screaming in her ears and she can’t tear her eyes off Dani, so all she hears are vague snippets. Something about ‘smoke inhalation’, ‘overnight admission’, and blessedly, ‘no long term consequences’. She takes it to mean, wonderfully, that Dani really is OK. She hopes to god Owen took in the rest.

It does nothing to calm the raging torrent of fear within her. Even knowing that Dani is ok, that river is running and there is no dam. They get Dani re situated in her room upstairs, and Jamie helps her shower. It is very clear that Dani is both exhausted and also frightened as hell. Jamie is prepared to fight to the last degree to stay, but whether they’re just really nice, or Owen has had a chat, they roll in a reclining chair and give her a blanket without even being asked. She waits until Owen is gone, having bid his goodbyes and promises to see them the next day, and the nurses have done their thing before crawling on to the bed, pulling Dani into her arms and kissing her gently.

“Fuck,” she whispers, finally. Up till now their only conversation has been her asking Dani as she’d needed things, with the bare minimum of answers required. She’s worried about Dani talking but hearing her, hearing her beautiful voice, is soothing beyond measure.

“Yeah,” Dani replies. Her voice is raspy, still sore from the smoke, and Jamie can feel her trembling. She soothes her hand down her head, rubbing a thumb across her ear, tucking a strand behind, moving down. It’s like she’s checking that Dani is really here, really solid and in her arms. It becomes apparent then that the trembling is not just Dani.

“Jamie,” Dani murmurs, “I’m OK. I’m fine.”

“I…” her voice cracks, ice flow gunshot and she now feels the tears trickling down her face, Dani freeing her hand up to wipe them away. “Fuck. That was so scary.”

“Yeah. It was.” Dani leans their foreheads together, runs her nose along the side of Jamie’s. Tears mingle, salt entwined. “I was really scared.”

Jamie hiccoughs and nods.

“But I’m ok.”

“You are,” Jamie whispers, gripping a bit tighter. “You’re ok. ”

“The shop… is it ok?”

Jamie pulls back a little. “You get hauled out of a burning building and you want to know if the _shop_ is alright?”

Dani grins wryly. “Well. It’s your shop. It’s like your home. It’s important to you.”

Jamie shakes her head. “No. Not like you are. I don’t know, I didn’t check. It’ll keep till tomorrow. Anyway, don’t worry about me and the shop, you’re the one in hospital.”

Dani nods, tucking her head back into Jamie’s shoulder and still fingers tangled. “You don’t have to stay tonight if you don’t want to. That chair doesn’t look the comfiest.”

The snort that emanates from Jamie is positively inelegant. She hopes it gets the point across.

Gentle fingers on Dani’s hair, across her temple and scratching at the base of her skull soothe her. She wants Dani to sleep, knows she needs to. Jamie is mindful of the oxygen tubing that’s running into her nose, an upgrade from the mask in the emergency department, but she manoeuvres around it until Dani’s breathing evens out, long and soft against her collarbone. It’s only once she’s certain Dani is asleep that she shifts back to the chair, reluctantly but not wanting to be found lying in a single hospital bed with her girlfriend. It’s a long night, constantly checking on Dani and waking with aching muscles from the chair, but she wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

Dani is ready to discharge herself the next morning, somewhat desperate to get out and Jamie practically has to hold her back until the doctors give them whatever advice they have to before Dani can go. It’s essentially, come back if you’re worried, but Jamie wants to listen to every single word just in case. She refuses to let go of Dani’s hand, completely careless of anyone looking at them. They drive that way, awkwardly changing gears together until Dani is laughing around it and it’s the most beautiful sound that Jamie has ever heard.

They drive to the shop and the apartment. Both of them know the apartment will be off limits. The fire had been confined to the kitchen of the pub, starting in old oil that had been left sitting for far too long. The damage to their apartment had been all smoke, but there had been enough of it.

The shop they find, is similarly filled with a black film on various surfaces, and one of the front windows has cracked from the heat next door. As Jamie stands on the pavement, in front of her whole life and gripping Dani’s hand in hers, she can’t really speak. Everything she had worked for, put her heart and soul into is right here, cracked and broken – fixable, but damaged, and all she feels is Dani’s hand.

All she feels is Dani.

“God, I’m sorry.”

Jamie shrugs. “I have insurance.”

“Yeah, but still… this is your baby.”

She looks sideways, at Dani’s eyes taking in the scenes of devastation in front of them and shrugs again. “We should probably see if we can find somewhere to stay tonight. And maybe some clothes. I don’t think ours are going to be wearable and I’ve been in these for 24 hours.”

“You’re staying at ours,” Owen says and Jamie nearly jumps out of her skin to find him standing two metres away holding two cups. One of them is her Greatest Lover Mug, the other All American Hero. “Tea? Coffee?”

“How did you get those?”

“Fireys let me in to get your cash tray. Hope you don’t mind.”

She doesn’t care if it makes the cups slop their contents over and on to the concrete, she launches herself at him and wraps her arms around his waist, hugging tight enough to make him make a slight ‘oof’ noise. They make their way into the cafe and Owen tucks them into a booth with breakfast and coffee and tea, Hannah fussing over them both. Any protests are waved away, and Jamie reflects yet again on the overwhelming love she feels from this, her family.

They spend the day sorting out as many things as possible from the comfort of the cafe which has been blessedly untouched by the fire, but is full of various Bly citizens coming in to discuss the most exciting thing that has happened since Mr Henderson’s cow got loose and ran down main street.

Jamie spends half the day on the phone to insurance companies and the pub owner, who is at least mortified and apologetic. They make a quick trip for some emergency clothes, and move all the still living plants into the greenhouse out the back. The hardest thing of the whole day is having to toss thousands of dollars of cut flowers into the rubbish skip – not just because of the cost, but because it cuts Jamie to the bone to see such waste. The power’s out though, the cool room dead, and the shop won’t be open before these wilt. She presses as many as she can on the shops up and down the street, the nursing home around the corner, but it’s not enough.

The whole day is made slightly more awkward by Jamie refusing to be more than a few feet from Dani for longer than a minute. It becomes glaringly obvious when Dani is exhaustedly curled up on Owen’s couch, her head on Jamie’s lap that evening and Owen asks Jamie if she’ll come grab dinner with him.

Her hand hovers over Dani’s head, wanting to go outside, have a smoke, get some air and walk but also feeling like the tether keeping her right there is tighter than ever.

“Go,” murmurs Dani.

“Naah, I’ll stay here,” she says, her hand going right back to Dani’s head.

There’s a silence that hangs heavy in the room, as Dani sits up and searches Jamie’s face with eyes that Jamie find almost piercing. “Jamie. Go get dinner with Owen.”

“I’m good,” she says, raising a challenging eyebrow back at her. “Really.”

Dani raises her own eyebrow back and leans in. “Go. You don’t have to keep an eye on me, I’m really fine.”

“I’m not keeping an eye on you.”

“You are.”

“I’m just tired,” she protests, but it sounds weak even to her own ears. “Don’t feel like the walk.”

Dani pulls closer, picks up her hand. “Try again. Cos you’re a dreadful liar.”

Jamie makes a face at her. For starters, she’s an excellent liar, but secondly, Dani’s ability to call her on her bullshit has been sharpening by the day and Jamie isn’t sure she’s ready. It doesn’t matter if she’s ready or not, because Dani is looking at her expectantly and Jamie can’t, won’t, let her down.

“I… maybe it’s not you I’m worried about,” she says quietly. “Maybe I need to be here.”

She might be a fantastic liar, but she’s never been great at opening her heart with the truth. Right now though, she doesn’t have it in her to prevaricate. She feels so close to breaking, so paper thin with her vulnerability, that she doesn’t even bother trying. She trusts Dani with this. Trusts her with her heart.

Dani’s thumb strokes hers. “I’ll be here when you get back. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jamie chokes a little, feeling her throat close up with the emotions threatening to overflow. She knows the tears are gathering, wills them not to fall and curses under her breath when they do anyway. Dani’s arms are around her, pulling her in, holding her close. She can hear her name, urgent and close, hot on Dani’s breath but she’s shaking with the crying she can’t hold back. She lets it out, lets it all out until she’s exhausted against Dani’s shoulder. The whole twenty four hours of whirlwind horror and relief finally spent on Owen’s damn couch. Owen and Hannah appear to have made themselves scarce and that makes Jamie feel a bit guilty because it’s their apartment.

When the torrent has stopped, she pulls back, sees Dani’s understanding soft smile, feels her thumbs wiping away the last remnants of the cascade, and sighs a little.

“Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologise for.”

“I got your shirt wet.”

Dani rolls her eyes. “Please. Don’t apologise for showing me how you feel. Don’t ever apologise for crying.”

Jamie gives her a watery smile. “Not good at this am I.”

Dani runs a finger down her jaw. “You’re excellent at it. Better than you even know. It’s not easy letting someone in. Look at you all brave, talking out your feelings.”

Jamie chuckles, looks up, lets her gaze drown in Dani. Make-up free, hair thrown up in a lazy bun with wisps escaping from all angles. She’s never looked more beautiful and Jamie’s heart is thudding in her chest.

“Dani.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

It turns out to be easier than she ever thought it would be. Uttering three words that she’s held under her breast bone, inside her safe, until they were ready to be said. Three words that she’s never said before in her life. Not to her parents, not to her brothers, not to anyone who has ever mattered to her. It’s a lifetime of her holding them back until she can do nothing but let them slip out and it’s so much easier than she thought it would be. So much better.

Not handing over her heart, not throwing it out there and hoping it won’t be trampled but instead, holding out a hand and asking someone to take it. Asking someone to walk with her, side by side.

Just three words.

Love.

Dani, beautiful Dani, just smiles and Jamie can see the light shining in her eyes.

“Yeah? Good, because I love you too.”

So easy, it turns out.

Jamie pulls her in, kisses her, gently drinking her in. “Love you,” she whispers, needing to say it again.

Dani gives a little huff and kisses her again, and Jamie can feel it, right there in the kiss. They’re still kissing, hands wandering far too much for their location, when the front door opens and Owen sticks his head through but with a hand covering his eyes. “Uh, alright to come in with dinner?”

Jamie pulls back sheepishly and grins. “Sure, we’re naked but come on in.”

Dani punches her gently on the arm.

Owen and Hannah don’t look even remotely upset, in fact, the smile on Owen’s face is positively gleeful and she has to stop herself from punching _him_ on the arm. She does pull herself together, but still refuses to move further than a few feet from Dani for the rest of the evening. There seems to be an unspoken agreement from everyone that they’re just going to let her, at least for tonight.

It takes them a few days to start getting things sorted out. Jamie doesn’t comment on the fact that while she and Dani are in Owen’s bed, the couch looks miraculously unslept on. Owen looks like he’s floating on air and Jamie couldn’t be happier for them. She knows that when they want to talk, they’ll talk.

It’s about three days later, that they’re told the apartment will be months to be fixed. The shop will be ready in a few weeks, leaving them homeless but employed. As Jamie is taking the time to scrub down the walls, she has a thought. She’s chosen to do the job herself, because the insurance company was taking time to organise someone and she was at a loose end anyway. It’s a thankless task, sugar soap and water, her arms aching despite her years of hauling bags of soil around. She dusts her hands down her already filthy pants and looks around.

The shop is empty, no plants and no flowers, just endless surfaces white and mottled grey. It takes her a minute, squeezing the bridge of her nose while the thoughts flow, and she takes a step back. Locking up the shop takes but a minute and she squints up into the English excuse for an early summer sun.

She finds Dani in Owen and Hannah’s apartment, rearranging her suitcase for the fifth time in their small, cramped space and feels the air rush into her lungs when she’s granted that same happy smile Dani always seem to have for her.   
  


“Thought you were scrubbing.”

“I was. Then I thought…” Jamie stops and rubs the top of her head. “Well, I had a thought.”

Dani stands up, looking at her confused. “Mmm.”

“What… what if we didn’t re-open.”

Dani looks at her like she has two heads. Possibly three.

“What?”

“What if we didn’t reopen? I have insurance and… well… we could, do something else.”

Dani swallows. “Jamie, are you OK

Jamie runs a hand through her hair, ruffles it as she goes. “Yeah. You know, I actually am. I really am.” She sits down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve just, I’ve always wanted to travel and see a bit of the world. Really only stuck down in Bly because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I thought you loved it here?”

“I love my friends. I like my work, but, I’ve spent my life tied down here. On this damn island, to these damn places, feeling like it’s never been a choice.” She looks up at Dani, who is now standing so near her, blue eyes shining like sea glass. “I have a choice now.”

Dani sits down, takes her hand. “You do.” She plays her thumb over Jamie’s calluses, turning her hand over and rubbing. “You can choose. You want to travel?”

Jamie nods. “OK, so this is going to sound mental…”

“Probably not but go for it anyway.”

“So, I mean we don’t have to decide right now, but I was thinking, maybe we could go Stateside. See some of the country?”

“You want to go to America?”

“I always have. New York, California, Disneyland, Vermont – who wouldn’t want to.”

“I’ve never seen those places either.” Dani laces their fingers together. “Spent my whole life in view of corn…. Vermont?”

“I mean, if you wanted to traipse across Europe that would be ok too. I guess. I’ve never had the choice before and I’d like to. I want to. With you.” She tucks an errant strand of hair behind Dani’s ear. “Even if we end up back here.”

Dani leans into her. “I really love you, you know.”

A kiss to the top of a blonde hair. “Love you too. So much.”

“So you’re choosing travel?”

Jamie sighs. “I don’t mind. Whatever we do, I want to do it with you. I choose you.”

“You know that sounds like some kind of slogan right.”

Jamie groans. “I was trying to be romantic.”

“Sorry. It was very romantic.”

“You’ve ruined it now.”

“Sorry.”

They sit for a few more minutes before Dani turns her head and kisses Jamie’s shoulder.

“Jay?”

“Mmm.”

“I choose you too. For wherever, whenever.” She lays her head back down gently on Jamie’s shoulder.

Jamie doesn’t know the answer yet, to whether they will stay or go. She feels nothing but calm though, calm and warmth floating through her veins in a giddy concoction that leaves her a little bit breathless. Dani’s palm warm against hers, and Dani’s head on her shoulder, scent of shampoo in the air and soft against her, is all Jamie needs.

She doesn’t, she thinks, have it in her to be worried about the future so hard that she ruins this. Happiness has found a home in her, and she has let it, invited it in, made it tea. Whatever the future brings, she will walk forward, next step upon next step – one day at a time. Into the light.

********************

_Jamie grins. “Pleased to meet you then, Dani, are you looking for anything in particular?”_

_Dani smiles again, a wide thing that Jamie thinks she likes._

“ _Oh. Yes. I’m here about the job.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **sobs**


End file.
